


Executive Producer Dick Wolf

by JayTDawgzone9999



Series: OC Adventures [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Accidental Eavesdropping, Accidents, Ambiguous Mental Health Disorders, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Anxiety Disorder, Awkward Conversations, Awkward Sexual Situations, Awkwardness, Axe-Crazy Character, Because I sure as hell didn't, Blood, Commercials, Cursed Inanimate Objects, Disturbing Fluff, Disturbing Themes, Drugs, Dystopia, Evil Santa Claus, F/M, Fridge Horror, Getting to Know Each Other, Horror, Huge Guy/Tiny Girl, I wrote this for myself but you can read it if you want, Inanimate Objects, Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft, Memory Loss, Mental Anguish, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Mild Blood, Multiracial Character, Non-Chronological, One Shot Collection, Oral Sex, Original Fiction, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Outdoor Sex, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Apocalyptic, Recreational Drug Use, Self-Indulgent, Shower Sex, Showers, Size Difference, Smut, Snapshots, Social Anxiety, Some Humor, Stand Alone Chapters, Stolen Moments, Survival Horror, Suspense, Temporary Amnesia, Tentacle Monsters, Tentacle Rape, To Be Edited, Trampolines, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Wandering the Earth, don't take this seriously, dystopian universe, one shots, this is just for fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:07:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 43,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23250688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayTDawgzone9999/pseuds/JayTDawgzone9999
Summary: The world is ending and thanks to the absolute lack of fucks given on the part of pretty much anyone, the fate of the world is left up to a single aspiring marine biologist. With the rest of the world dropping the collective ball on everything due to sheer laziness and negligence, she finds friends in very unlikely places along the way, revealing that the world is nothing so much as it is a spinning ball of directionless chaos hurtling through the universe.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Series: OC Adventures [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1906642
Kudos: 7





	1. Context

**Author's Note:**

> The first chapter is just context and background info that may or may not be relevant but I added it anyways. If you wanna know who the hell my oc's are before continuing, you'll wanna read this first. If you're wondering about the title, that has a simple answer: none.

For context, here are the main characters. 

1) Joseph ( * not his real name)

\- about 23 years old, give or take a year 

\- 6'9" 

-about 300 lbs???

\- race: unknown

\- physical appearance: long, straight dark red hair about halfway down his back, usually wears it down with or without a few braids in it, light brown skin, violet eyes(?). His facial features don't suggest much, if anything, about what race or ethnicity he might be. People have tried speaking to him in Spanish more than once because they assumed he was Mexican and never bothered to actually ask. Has been described as "sexy, but in a trashy way" by women and men alike. His pupils look a little too small sometimes, but nobody feels like mentioning it. 

\- other: Intelligent and cunning and significantly physically stronger than should be possible for a regular 20-something man, and often thinks up of unconventional solutions for problems on the fly when the situation requires it and is prone to going on odd, philosophical tangents at times, and shows genuine curiosity about learning as much as possible about other people and the rest of the world, but his grasp (or lack thereof) of basic metaphors and simple, well-known customs and cultural norms often gives people a negative impression of him. A news article printed about him once referred to him as "Florida Man" despite the fact that he wasn't born there and never lived there. Though he's genuinely friendly towards people who don't bother him and enjoys meeting new people and making new friends and is good with animals and babies, he's also a compulsive womanizer who would light himself on fire for pussy on a good day and the look in his eyes when he sees gore and bloodshed shows that there's something off about him, and even he doesn't fully understand it. 

* "but what the fuck is his real name then? A surprise, that's what. 

2) Keiko

\- 17 or 18 (she might be lying about her age)

\- about 5'

\- about 100 lbs??? 

\- race: half white and half Japanese (doesn't know the specifics beyond that)

-physical appearance: short, petite, has soft, curly light pinkish hair (think a very muted pink/peachy color rather than anime protagonist pink), with loose curls that are about chin-length and blue eyes. Often considered sexy in a cute, innocent way by other people, though she disagrees. Is sort of pale but nothing that would make her stand out. Might have big boobs but she usually wears clothes that hide them so nobody really knows. Would look younger than she actually is if not for the slight dark circles under her eyes and the fact that she almost never smiles. 

-other: Her father, who loved her, disappeared when she was young under mysterious circumstances and her mother refused to tell her anything about it. After a lifetime of emotional/mental/psychological abuse by her mother, along with occasional physical abuse, she eventually ran away and managed to get into an excellent university, but her dreams are cut short by the world ending. Though she's an extremely gifted college student and the most academically talented person anyone's ever seen in centuries, she has little self confidence and often doubts herself even when there's no reason to. Being around people often makes her nervous and she prefers to be alone and study. Despite preferring to avoid people, however, she rarely holds any ill will towards anyone and feels empathy for others easily, believing that the best way to solve her own problems is to help others and do what she can to make the world a better place, willing to help almost anyone she crosses paths with so long as it doesn't involve being the center of attention. She may or may not cry a lot, but as she's a very private person, almost nobody will ever find out. 

Possibly relevant plot details: Sometime in the future after the U.S became a failed state, zombies (or things that appear to be zombies) start popping up and since they spread very slowly compared to what you usually see in zombie series, a lot of people just don't bother to direct their fucks towards shit that actually matters, as they're too busy focusing on other shit, and things get as hairy as Bigfoot in a shaving cream commercial. "But that metaphor makes no sense" yeah, and neither does life, so just roll with it. 

What to expect: This is a series of adventures my hapless main character OCs has with one of my crackhead OCs that involve some of my kinks, read the tags first, don't like don't read, blah blah blah you know the drill.

Edit: Check out chapter 9 for 10 fun facts about each of them if you want a little extra background info about these two before reading the rest of the chapters or if you just want to know a little more about what their lives were like before the apocalypse.

Second edit: If I feel sufficiently motivated, I may post more shenanigans about them, but with different characters so if you like anything you read here, keep an eye out. 


	2. The actual first chapter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Start here if you're here for the smut (or just curiosity.) Not every chapter will have a complete sex scene, but this is rated Explicit for a reason so keep that in mind when reading/deciding whether or not to keep on reading.

As far as couches went, the couch Keiko was sitting on wasn't what anyone would call comfortable, and the television across from it only had 3 channels, but since there was nothing else to do, she sat there waiting-either for Joseph to come back or for something worse to happen. 

"If I'm not back by morning, don't wait up for me." he told her before leaving to find food. 

Even though he had also told her that she should go to sleep if she got tired, she couldn't bring herself to do so, even before she saw that horrific broadcast on channel 3 that made her throw the broken remote at the TV during the anxiety attack the broadcast gave her. Aside from the cut on her hand from trying to pick up the remote, Keiko wasn't hurt, but she still couldn't shake the uneasy feeling hanging over her like a cloud even after her anxiety attack ended. 

Aside from the sound of a dog barking in the distance, it had been a quiet night so far, at least until the door opened and she grabbed a rusty knife; hoping she wouldn't have to use it but reminding herself there was a good chance she would. 

"What the-" 

Keiko dropped the knife, kicking it under the couch when she saw Joseph, minus his shirt, covered in blood. 

"Don't worry, it's not mine." he told her, kicking off his shoes and dropping the axe he had been holding and a bag of something-she couldn't see what- on the kitchen table before her brain could register what he had done. 

"Thanks, sweetheart." he said, trying to go in for a kiss after wiping his face off with the towel she gave him. 

"Wait-" she pressed her hand (the one that hadn't been cut,) on his face when she noticed there was still blood on his jeans. 

"Oh, right,-I didn't notice that, I'll go change." he reassured her when he noticed the light wash denim jeans he had stolen off a dead cop were no longer clean. 

It was useless to ask too many questions, Keiko had realized that a long time ago (strange how a few weeks felt like a long time these days,) so when he left to change, Keiko sat on the couch again and stared at nothing, ignoring the stinging sensation from the cut on her hand. Time never felt real anymore, and she soon realized she didn't care. Maybe she had always lived this way and her old life was just a dream, she thought, until Joseph sat next to her, leaving no space in between them; resting one of his feet on the coffee table. 

"What is that?" she asked when she saw the fancy Rolex watch he was holding. As far as she knew, he didn't even know how to wear a watch, and though she knew she wouldn't like the answer, she asked another question. 

"A watch." 

"Where did you get it?" 

"Oh, don't worry, nobody will be coming back for this. I can sell it for cash if we find a town that still uses it, and if we get lucky, we can eat more often, maybe even relax for a while in some fancy apartment or something." 

Her stomach dropped when he threw the watch on the coffee table; the noise startling her so she didn't notice he had pulled her onto his lap until he had already done it. 

"What happened here?" he asked when he held her hand, looking at the cut on it. 

"Oh, nothing-I just accidentally cut myself with a knife-it's okay, really-" she squeaked in a combination of surprise and embarrassment when he sucked on the wound; her face heating up and her stomach tying itself into a knot. 

"You didn't have to stay up for me, you know. If you're tired, you can go to sleep." he told her, running a hand through her hair. 

"Uh, it's okay, I couldn't sleep." she told him. 

It wasn't a lie, necessarily, though she omitted some details out of embarrassment, like the fact that she had an anxiety attack while he was gone and cut herself throwing a broken remote at the TV in a fit of sheer panic and still hadn't fully calmed down yet. The look on his face told her it was the wrong answer, as the grin on his face told her all to well, his eyes wandering up and down her body. 

"Oh, I see,-you missed me that much? You're so cute." 

The expression on her face while he kissed her cheek wasn't worth describing; a little piece of her soul shriveling up and shattering into a million pieces as he pressed a hand on the small of her back. She had never hated him, or even disliked him-he had been kinder to her than most people had and since the beginning of their unfortunate journey, he had more than gone out of his way to take care of her, as she couldn't survive on the Outside by herself; claiming not to be hungry when there was only enough food for one of them and trying to find ways to make her more comfortable without the steady access to modern conveniences that people on the Inside enjoyed. 

Through all their time together, she realized he would never hurt her and she knew she was in no danger in that regard, but sometimes she noticed a strange look in his eyes and some part of her, something older and wiser than her conscious self, told her not to be too quick to question what she saw. 

"You know, if you keep on giving me that look, I'm gonna pull up your skirt and fuck you right here on this couch, is that what you want?" 

For a second, Keiko couldn't bring herself to turn away, even though making direct eye contact with him when he said that made her want to disappear into a hole in the ground. 

"Ah, I'm just joking, sweetheart." he laughed, ruffling her hair a little even though he didn't loosen his grip on her. 

"Sorry, I'm just nervous." she told him after she realized she had been quiet a moment too long, letting herself rest her head on his chest. 

"We'll be fine, don't worry." he told her; smoothing out her skirt with one hand before holding her close against him. "We'll get the hell out of here and be gone before you know it." He pet her hair gently before continuing, giving a hum of approval when she seemed to relax more. "First thing tomorrow, we'll find a vehicle and say goodbye to this dump. Personally, I won't miss it at all, how about you?" 

When he looked down to gauge her reaction, she was already asleep. 

"See you in the morning." he thought, holding her close before closing his eyes to get some sleep himself. 

____

When sunlight peeked through the broken aluminum blinds on the only window in the ugly shack they had sheltered in, the first thing Joseph heard was a small, soft moan. 

"Please...don't stop..." 

Recognizing the voice instantly, he smirked when he saw the cute girl sleeping in his lap make an interesting expression as she moaned softly in her sleep, asking some non-existent person to continue doing whatever she dreamt they were doing to her. According to his logic, there was a fifty-fifty chance she was dreaming about him: either she was dreaming about him or else she was dreaming about someone else, so while she might not have been dreaming about him, that didn't mean he couldn't pretend that she was. Not wanting to get up just yet, he pushed her up gently so she wouldn't slide down and rested his hand on her back, his fingers catching the fabric of her shirt and pushing it up a little, so he went with it, pushing her shirt up so he could slide his hand under it, rubbing her back slowly and grabbing her waist with his free hand while he did so. 

"Don't...don't stop, please-" her voice was so quiet, he had to strain a moment to hear it, a spark of warmth blooming deep inside him when he heard the sweet, desperate sound of her voice. Except for rubbing her back, he stayed as still as possible, not wanting to risk ruining the moment. He breathed in, holding the breath for a moment when her voice almost knocked the air right out of his lungs. 

"I-I think I'm-" 

The room was quiet for a moment (or so he thought,) until he was finally able to blink again a few seconds later (closer to twenty, actually,) pushing her up a little more without realizing what he was doing. When he remembered where he was again, he realized she had woken up. Still bleary-eyed and a bit confused, she looked up at him and without warning, her face turned red. 

"What kind of dream was I having?!" she asked, not necessarily to him in particular, looking around for a second after realizing she had drooled a little on his bare chest while she was asleep. 

"No idea, but it seemed like a good one." he replied, laughing a bit when she pushed herself off of him. He made no attempt to pull her back when she got off him, rushing to the door to put on her shoes and jacket. 

"It's morning already, we better get going!" she said, trying to tie her shoelaces as fast as possible with only one of her arms in her jacket. 

"Oh yeah, you're right. I'll be right there." he said, walking to the kitchen to grab the bag he put on the table. 

Of all the places to be, the apocalypse was a shitty one, but at least he had good company, he told himself when he grabbed the bag, heading towards the door.


	3. 2

Somewhere in what remained of a shitty office building in a shitty town, a group of battered, haggard looking men in disheveled suits with improvised weapons, a few cans of Cheese-Wiz, and nothing to live for sat around a round table with cheap office chairs (the kind with wheels.) Realizing life with nothing but a few cans of Cheese-Wiz and an old paperweight shaped like the 79th President of what used to be the United States of America wasn't worth it, an argument about what to do broke out sometime in the middle of the night after the last generator ran out of power, leaving them without central heating and air conditioning. Fortunately, being sometime in the middle of spring, it wasn't terribly cold. Unfortunately, there was something shambling around outside and it was hungry. 

Thirty miles away, a teenage girl glanced at the remains of the fire she had used to cook her dinner a couple hours ago, then up at the empty darkness above her in the cave she and the man she was traveling with had taken shelter in for the night. It was odd, really, what you could get used to, she thought as her eyes saw nothing but darkness. Over the miserable stretch of weeks she had been forced to wander in search of civilization, she had started to get the hang of telling the difference between the good kind of quiet and the bad kind of quiet. In a rare moment of luck, the type of quiet she noticed more closely resembled the good kind rather than its creepy cousin. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes and starting a series of breathing exercises she liked to do before going to sleep to help her fall asleep. It started out alright, until about the second or third breath in, when she heard a familiar shuffling, the sound of her traveling companion, laying out his own sleeping bag a few feet away from her. 

"He sure was gone a long time." she thought, rolling over and closing her eyes after realizing it was him thanks to the small sliver of moonlight that made its way into the cave. It had taken her less than a day to learn not to ask where he went when he disappeared with only a short note telling her he would be back soon, and this was no different. "I hope I sleep okay tonight." her thoughts abruptly screeched to a halt when the man lying a few feet away from her, thinking she was sound asleep, moved around a bit more. Though she couldn't see it, he slid his pants down, pulling up his shirt afterwards without taking it off,-all she heard was more rustling-"It's not very comfortable in here." she told herself, wondering how he had found a sleeping bag long enough for him. Being close to 7 feet tall, he barely fit on a regular sized bed, usually having to put a bench or something at the foot of the bed in order to sleep comfortably in one. 

Everyone has their problems, she told herself, closing her eyes and waiting for sleep to find her, but when she heard a low grunt followed by some soft breathing, all thoughts of sleep left her, the sudden shock and surprise overwhelming her. He had no idea, she thought-if he had known she was still awake, he would have said something-he always wished her a good night before either of them went to sleep. There was nothing she could do about it, her terrified and distracted mind told her-the awkwardness of telling him she could hear him-no, she couldn't risk it, it was too much, she thought, squeezing her eyes shut as tight as she could, something that grew harder as his breathing grew heavier and-

No. No, she refused. She would not give into the horrible, awful temptation to turn around-even if she couldn't avoid hearing him, she refused to look. Even if she couldn't see much, she had enough of an idea to know what she would see-his chest rising and falling with each breath, his head pressed back on the pillow and his eyes were probably shut, the noticeable outlines of the muscles of his chest and stomach and the way his arm was probably moving as he stroked his cock-

It was quiet, or very nearly so, in the cave, but all she heard was a continuous scream-one she soon realized was something going on inside her own head. Her head spun, her heart pounding; thumping in her chest like a set of drums, as she found herself unable to divert her attention away from the sound of his breathing-increasingly heavier than before, along with the occasional grunt and groan that passed his lips. A small, harmless garden snake slithered by, making its way to a hole in the ground as it chased after a mouse, but the sound was so insignificant compared to what was going on near her that she hardly noticed it, her whole body tense and a familiar warmth gathering inside her, coiling like a spring as a few more moans passed his lips. 

Judging by the sound of his breathing, he was probably almost done-"You got this, it's almost over, you'll be okay-" she told herself, squeezing her eyes shut and hugging herself as tightly as she could, until a moan a bit louder than the rest broke her train of thought, causing her to bite her lip, the salty taste of blood dripping down her chin while he finished, followed by a brief moment of silence, followed by another, and yet another.

"Oh, God." her thoughts were muddled with anger and disappointment at herself when she reached her hand down to adjust her shorts and realized how wet she was. 

"Oh, I understand now." she blinked, swallowing hard. "This is a nightmare." 

She breathed a sigh of relief, realizing that all she had to do was wait to wake up. "Thank God, I'm saved, when I wake up, I'll-" 

A sudden rustling noise, followed by the sensation of a large, warm object pressing up against her sleeping bag shattered her delusional hopes like a cabinet full of fancy china in a house exclusively occupied by a horde of drunk pro-wrestlers. 

"You know, if you wanted to watch, you could have just asked. I didn't realize you were awake at first actually." he commented like he was talking about something normal people talked about-not that she knew what sort of things those were, but that was irrelevant. 

"Uh, well,-" You've got to be kidding me, she thought. This was way too awkward, even for her. It was one thing to struggle to have normal relationships with friends, but to have the awkwardness affect other sorts of relationships was just too much. "I was just trying to sleep, but I couldn't fall asleep." 

It was difficult to see much, but the expression on his face, while not exactly reassuring, suggested that he wasn't upset. "Well, it happen sometimes. Nothing wrong with relieving some stress if it's bothering you." 

For better or for worse, he didn't care about starting a relationship with someone before having sex-he slept with whoever he wanted that wanted him back when the mood struck him, sometimes with people he had just met. It was no secret that he liked her and he was nothing if not attractive, but sex was just as emotionally uncomfortable and awkward for her as everything else, and she didn't dare risk making things worse by sleeping with him and somehow causing something to go wrong in the process. 

"I-" She paused for a minute to try to swallow again, unable to get rid of the dry feeling in her throat. Maybe this would be how she died, she told herself, choking to death because she had suddenly lost the ability to swallow, doomed to choke and suffocate in some cruel and unusual twist of fate. I hope I die quickly, she told herself, her thoughts sliding further and further into despair until she felt his hand on her waist. 

It was late. The sun had set a few hours ago, and there was still a lot of time until morning. They weren't exactly on a time schedule, either, she thought-no, wait, what the hell, what kind of bullshit is that? You can't fuck someone in the middle of the wilderness in a cave, that's dangerous-

"Is-is that what you want to do? Like, right now?" she asked. 

He arched an eyebrow, the expression on his face indicating amusement. "Yeah, if you'd like to. What do you want to do?" 

She blinked, a simple action that took half a second but felt more like 5 minutes. "Uh well-" 

Life was full of problems, she decided when she was about 5 years old, and also sucked sometimes for a whole host of reasons outside of her control, like the fact that despite being (just barely) an adult, she looked like she was 12 in almost every way possible, which was inconvenient for many reasons, especially when you weighed about 100 lbs soaking wet and some fifth graders were taller than you. 

"What, are you nervous? Don't be, there's a lot more you can do besides the usual, if that's what you're thinking. You want me to show you something that'll feel really good?" 

Swallowing one last time, she looked up at him, trying her best not to freak out despite the fact that his hand was still on her waist and he was fiddling with her bra strap with his other hand. "You promise you're not gonna...." 

"No, not unless you want to. All you have to do is lie down and move when I tell you to, does that sound alright?" 

Even if she hadn't noticed that he was at least somewhat hard (his pants and the relative darkness of the cave made it a bit difficult to tell,) the look on his face said it all. I mean, there are worse decisions I could make, right? she thought. 

"Alright." 

He flashed her a small grin, laying her down on her back before leaving a kiss on her neck. His grip on her waist was a little too hard, but his lips were much softer than she expected. 

"Take off your shorts." he told her, and when she complied, he slid two fingers insider her, pumping in and out slowly before rubbing that one spot that felt really good when she did it herself, and in fact, it felt even better when he did it. In a matter of seconds, a familiar sensation came over her and she clenched, realizing what had happened once her muscles relaxed. 

He was very good, she had to admit, for better or for worse. Probably not a good idea to praise him too much or else his ego might get really out of control, she thought, idly stroking his bicep while she tried to breathe normally again. 

"Alright, don't move, but let me know if it hurts." he told her, picking her legs up and holding them against his chest and stomach-there was no way he could throw her legs over his shoulders, so instead he held them against his body with one arm, thrusting in and out between her thighs, rubbing against that one sweet spot with each slow, practiced thrust. The sensation was like nothing she had ever experienced, the feeling of his (slightly too large,) cock sliding between her thighs being nothing short of alien, almost unreal, but after a few thrusts, the way it slid against her was good-way too good, she thought-not a very eloquent way to describe it, but she was too far gone to care, just hoping he wouldn't stop. 

He was so huge and felt so hot against her it made her head spin and her face heat up, her body crying out for release as he picked up the pace, bucking his hips with a few wordless grunts and groan. Aside from the sound of his voice vibrating in the air in a way that felt like it was invading her mind, she heard nothing and didn't see much more, given how dark it was inside the cave. 

"Fuck, you feel so good." he rasped, his voice a guttural growl while he pressed against her as much as he could, holding her legs in a tight grip so they wouldn't slip. "Too bad it's too dark to see the look on your face.-" 

For a moment, she thought she saw a flash of light, but soon realized it was just a physiological response to the arousal building up in her -when it got so hot it was almost unbearable, she bit her lip again, tasting the metallic tang of blood for the second time that night when she had a second orgasm, the shock-waves rippling through her body when she cried out in a small voice. 

"Um, I-" Ah, how to word this, she thought, not wanting to sound rude or ungrateful, but feeling a sudden wave of exhaustion hit her. "That was....it felt good, really good,-but I'm pretty tired now." she breathed, wanting nothing so much as to go to sleep. 

With a soft chuckle, he kissed the top of her forehead once he had recovered, a smile on his face as he did so. "I told you it would. And don't apologize, I could go for the same thing right now." he told her, wrapping an arm around her as she curled up next to him, both of them falling asleep together before her mind could wander to any negative thoughts.


	4. 3

Somewhere in the middle of the wilderness, two of the weirdest people on Earth were staring at something beyond the comprehension of mere mortals. 

"Uh....."

An usually unsettling sound, like buzzing but louder and more intense than buzzing should ever sound like, filled the air. 

"Is that...." the teenage girl staring at the giant winged creature, its bulbous eyes huge and unblinking in all its disgusting, grotesque glory, thought. "No, it can't be, I must be seeing things." 

Though the girl and her traveling companion, a man who had been born thousands of miles away from her somewhere she had never seen, had lived very different lives and seen very different things throughout them, they both arrived at the same uniquely unpleasant conclusion at the same instant. 

"A giant mosquito?" 

She could hardly believe it, but of all the possibilities, it was the most, well, possible. Probably not the right word but whatever. 

"Hey, don't worry." the man tried to reassure her. He hoped he was right and he had no real reason to doubt his eyesight (for once, he was stone cold sober, a rare occurrence even before the apocalypse,) so he figured the best course of action would be to do what he did best, which was to beat the shit out of it and hope it stayed down when he was done. "It's just a giant bug."

"Joseph, no!" 

_____

Somewhere in the bowels of hell (also known as California,) Keiko, a teenage girl who just a few weeks ago had been eager to finish her first semester of college, was now stuck in the wilderness at least several hundred miles away from the nearest sign of civilization, dragging an unconscious man more than twice her size in a wheelbarrow; sweat soaking her clothes and tears streaming down her face. Not wanting to make assumptions she couldn't find direct scientific evidence to support, Keiko had always considered herself agnostic. If God did exist, though, she figured He was probably laughing His ass off at her. Luckily, before she ran out of energy, she found a small, abandoned house. For better or for worse, the house was unremarkable, save for the fact that the only bed had been so badly damaged, she had to (very slowly and carefully,) deposit her "friend" (he wasn't really a friend, but she had no idea what else to call him and didn't want to start asking questions that had no answers,) in the bathtub, which was unattached to any of the bathroom walls, drag the couch in front of the door, and hope for an uneventful night. 

For a few moments after the sun set, it was pretty quiet. A gentle breeze whistled through the trees nearby, which wasn't so bad, except it set off the annoying wind chimes in front of the house. Once the five minute burst of panic that hit her with as much force as an 18-wheeler semi truck passed, she then crawled in the bathtub with her unconscious friend, wiping her tears on his shirt. 

"God damn, hell is ugly as shit." 

She blinked, her eyes still wet with tears. Besides the wind chimes that went off several minutes ago, there had been nothing to listen to except the sound of his heartbeat. She should try to be helpful, she thought, but lost her chance when he wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her nice and tight, effectively cutting off the fragile train tracks that took her train of thought from her brain to her mouth. 

"On second thought, maybe this isn't hell." he said after getting a good look at his surroundings. "Still ugly as shit though. Who the fuck built this place?" 

Nothing he said registered in her brain, and not just because she was still startled from the unexpected sound of the wind chimes earlier. Of all the places to be in the world, it was one of the best and also one of the worst, a peculiar turn of circumstances that left her at a loss for words. Thankfully, at least, the wind chimes hadn't started again. 

"Well, never mind." he continued, looking down at the girl he was holding. "There are worse ways I could have woken up." 

"How many fingers am I holding up?" 

It was a cliched question, but with all the weird shit that happened, Keiko didn't want to take any chances, holding up three fingers and holding her breath until he answered.

"Three. Don't worry, I'm fine. I'll be glad if I never see another mosquito again though." 

No sooner than she remembered to let go of the breath she had been holding did he move her so she could face him, a little difficult given the size of the bathtub, which was a few inches shorter than he would have liked; a sly grin on his face when he noticed the way she was blushing. 

"You know, if you wanted to fool around, you could have just taken me to the bed." 

"There's no bed." she replied, her mouth moving a little too fast and her brain moving a little too slow. "That wasn't-that's not why I put you the tub-you were passed out! You could have died!" had he not been holding her so close, she would have buried her face in her hands, and he laughed a little when he saw her face turn even redder. 

"Hey, don't look at me like that, it's not funny-" she stammered, scrambling to sit up when he let go; curling up in a ball and refusing to look at him. "I'm shy, I can't handle embarrassing situations like this." 

"Aw, come on, it was just a joke-" with her no longer in his arms, he could move around more now. "Getting out of here is gonna be a pain, though, is this supposed to be a tub for midgets or something?" he asked, very awkwardly managing to hoist himself up into a sitting position. "Oh, right-this is why I don't use bathtubs-" he added once he realized it was a normal sized bathtub. 

For being a normal sized, slightly old bathtub, it wasn't that uncomfortable to be smashed in there with him, she thought, grabbing him without being aware of it when she heard the wind chimes again. 

"Don't move." she told him, her mind racing with all the horrible possibilities of what could have set the wind chimes off again. It wasn't like the wind had picked up speed in the last few minutes, so the other options weren't exactly reassuring. 

"Under better circumstances I would be enjoying this a lot more." he replied as she held onto him tightly with every ounce of strength she had, which to him, felt only like a pleasant, gentle squeeze. 

The silence after the wind chimes went off a second time was a little too suspicious, they thought, so when a half rotten bag of bones barely held together by a few damaged muscle fibers wandered in the bathroom, he picked her up, placed her on the other side of the bathtub, and slammed the zombie's head on the wall, leaving a gross reddish stain on the cheap beige paint. 

_______

"Well, that should fix it." Joseph said, a little too proud of himself when he sealed off the other door neither of them had noticed was there after checking outside to see if any of its friends had decided to tag along and finding no company. With a mix of disgust and admiration for his twisted sense of creativity, Keiko realized he had used some of the zombie's bones to barricade the door shut. 

"Uh, well, guess I'm not in a position to complain..." Keiko added, turning away so she wouldn't have to look at the door. "I think it's about time to call it a day." 

"Yeah, it's pretty late." he replied, agreeing with her assessment. "Although I did spend part of the day unconscious so I'd rather not go to sleep yet." 

"There's nothing to do though." she replied. I should have worded that differently, she told herself, remembering who she was with. Everyone had their faults, and though his weren't too intolerable to deal with, she found his interest in her a little less than flattering. It wasn't that he wasn't handsome (he was- almost too much so, in fact, it was actually distracting sometimes) or unkind (he was nicer to her than her own family had been,) or even dishonest (he always kept his word,) but something felt off about him and any attempt she made to figure out why ended in a headache. 

"There's always something to do if you use your imagination." 

"Really?" 

He could kill her, of course. He could kill ten people twice her size without breaking a sweat, killing her would be no sweat. He wouldn't, though, and she was too tired to worry about those nagging feelings she had, so she let herself respond without taking any of that into account, a little sarcasm tinged in her voice. 

"Just saying." 

He wasn't wrong, but that wasn't the point. What was the point, then, she asked herself-she was stuck in the middle of the wilderness with one of the few people in the world who tolerated her continued presence in their lives, and she was lonely, scared, and a little cold (it was a little cold outside.) 

_____

The bed inside the bedroom was damaged to the point of being unusable, so instead they settled for a beat-up old couch (not the same one she used to block the front door,) Joseph holding her down while he kissed her. His technique wasn't bad by any means, but her lips were chapped from not drinking enough water and it felt a bit uncomfortable at first, but she ignored it, the heat sparking insider her stomach making up for it. It had been a long day and it showed in her reaction time when he slid his hand up her skirt, still holding her down with his other hand. She grabbed some of his hair, running her fingers through the long red strands. It looked like blood, she thought, trying not to think about it. Strangely enough, it suited his complexion pretty well-it was his natural color, after all, and not like some shocking neon stuff from a box of hair dye, after all. It was pretty soft too. 

Her thoughts wandered around a little as his hands roamed her body, the heat simmering inside her threatening to boil over when he held her close, feeling something hard poke at her thigh through his rough, beat-up jeans. The feeling of the fabric against her skin was a little unpleasant, but the warmth of his body heat and the careful yet enthusiastic way he caressed her felt lovely, and she couldn't help but sigh into the crook of his neck while he went to take off his belt. A slight creaking sound signaled that life had other plans for them, however, as only a scant few seconds had passed when a sinkhole opened under them, swallowing them underground while they barely had time to scream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have nothing against the state of California (that I know of,) I just needed to use it as a plot device.


	5. 4

It wasn't every day the rain outside seemed to pour sideways, but after all the shit Keiko had seen, it was about as interesting as watching paint dry (which she had, in fact, done before.) What she hadn't done before was spend such a rainy day inside a two room cabin with a man who may or may not have been a criminal-even after several weeks of traveling together, Keiko still found herself without an answer to that question and she figured at this point, she would never have one so there was no point in wasting time pondering the question. Well, that, and she was currently busy and even if she wanted to, she couldn't exactly do anything about it. 

The cabin was almost certainly not insulated in any significant way (unless she counted the ugly ass tarp hung over the roof by whoever had been there before them,) but she was sweaty, her heart pounding and her cheeks burning, and Joseph's hands were so warm that when he first picked her up, she thought she was going to pass out. She knew for certain that she wouldn't be able to walk for the next several hours after this but since they were stuck there until the next morning, it didn't matter. 

Everything had gone sideways after the car they stole that morning broke down on the highway and they had to walk 5 miles until they found somewhere to hide from the blazing hot sun that had been beating down on them, but about 2 miles in, the sun turned to rain, and the rain turned into a thunderstorm. Once Joseph kicked open the door, the zombie inside screamed at them, prompting Joseph to pick up Keiko with one hand and smash the zombie's head in the wall with the other. After tossing the corpse outside and cleaning the wall, they were left in a shitty old cabin with a backpack filled with food and water, a 5 inch chef's knife, a half-inflated inflatable tube man (he was bright neon orange, to be specific,) half of a bar of plain bar soap, a bathtub filled with DND dice, a single coin in Joseph's pocket (the left pocket,) and nothing to do. 

"That was gross." Keiko, who was then curled up on an old couch, hugging her knees to her chest, shuddered at the thought of cleaning up zombie brains after Joseph had dumped what was left of it outside and they had cleaned the wall. The inflatable tube man they had moved there to hide a large bone fragment that was stuck in the wall didn't help matters much, but at least it was something. 

"Not as gross as my shirt right now." Some of the blood had gotten on Joseph's shirt, to which he responded by taking his jacket off, then taking his shirt off and throwing it across the room. Keiko closed her eyes when it landed in the bathtub in the next room, the feather-light pressure of the shirt landing in the tub causing the whole thing to shatter and fall apart instantly, spilling thousands of dice everywhere. 

After walking into the bathroom to investigate what the hell just happened, Keiko closed her eyes for a moment, pretending she was somewhere else. It was a nice moment, but like most nice moments in her life, it didn't last. 

"What the hell are these?" Joseph asked, picking up one of the dice. 

"They look like dice-people use them for gambling." Keiko knew by now not to wonder about it when Joseph had no idea what a normal, everyday object was used for-he wasn't stupid by any means, but there were a lot of normal everyday things he had never seen before-Keiko had been pretty sheltered in her early childhood, but even she could tell that the small but significant gaps in his knowledge were unusual at the very least, not that it mattered much then. It wasn't like they had anyone to gamble with and doing so would have been a bad idea anyways because Keiko had zero confidence in her ability to gamble. 

Joseph shrugged, throwing one of them across the room before stepping over some of them to grab his shirt. Keiko couldn't decide whether or not she wanted him to put his shirt back on, but considering how dirty it was, it was probably better if he didn't, an unfortunate thought for a variety of reasons. Still, Keiko couldn't help but feel her face heat up when he looked at her, turning away quickly in hopes that he wouldn't notice her face turning pink (it didn't work.) 

"Well, as long as we're stuck here, we should find something to do." 

Since it was still mid-afternoon, she had no choice but to admit he was right. How troublesome. Keiko barely had time to blink before he took a coin out of his pocket (a penny, because with the kind of luck they'd been having, there was no way he'd have anything worth more than that,) and handed it to her. 

"What's this for?" 

"Since there's nothing to do, I thought we'd flip a coin to decide how to solve that. We'll each pick a side and whoever wins gets to decide what we'll do." 

It was an innocent enough suggestion, or would have been coming from almost anyone else, but Keiko only needed to glance at Joseph for a few seconds to see the way his eyes were wandering over her body. It wasn't the first time they had been stuck in some boring, ugly, not so comfortable place together before but before then, something had always interrupted their boredom fairly quickly. Still, it wasn't like there were any better options. At least that was what her brain told her and given her current stress levels and unpleasant mood, she had no motivation to waste time analyzing why. 

"And what would you want to do exactly?" Keiko knew beyond a doubt there was no reason to ask, but she felt the need to regardless. 

"Don't worry, nothing dangerous if that's what you're wondering." 

In another set of circumstances, Keiko might have questioned it further but just then, she felt no desire to. She decided not to think too hard about what that meant. 

"Alright. I'll pick heads." 

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and flipped the coin. It landed on tails, and the gleam of light dancing in his eyes was as much of an answer as what he told her after she asked him what he wanted to do. 

That was how, after yet another long, boring, miserable day of wandering through the apocalypse, Keiko found herself sitting in Joseph's lap while he fucked her. Or something like that. It would inaccurate to call what she was doing sitting, as she was small enough for him to pick up with ease, holding her by both of her legs as if she were a doll-if he hadn't been so good at what he was doing, she would have been wondering how much her back would hurt after this-her legs would certainly hurt, but for the last few minutes, she couldn't bring herself to care. Some problems were destined to be dealt with in the future, she thought, and as such, there was no point in worrying about them in the present. Well, that and it had been impossible to think about much of anything, much less worry, in the last few minutes. 

Keiko felt her palms become damp and slippery with sweat when Joseph asked her to sit on his lap on the couch in the main room (to his credit, he did try to move the inflatable tube man so its odd, unsettling and unnaturally cheerful face wouldn't be staring at them, but the damn thing refused to abide by the basic laws of physics, so he had no choice but to give up after a few tries.) 

"Come on, there's nothing to be nervous about." Joseph told her when she cautiously sat on his lap, her legs closed together as she faced the wall opposite of the bathroom, her heart threatening to burst out of her chest and run away when he turned her to face him, running a hand through her curly pink hair, a little frizzier than usual thanks to the weather. 

"I wouldn't go that far-we're still stuck in this, after all." she threw a glance at the wall where the inanimate object with a face that had no right looking the way it did was staring at them, its eyes appearing to cast a mocking glare at them. 

"Well, aside from that." 

Keiko didn't remember much after he hiked her skirt up around her waist, his hand slipping inside her panties until after the dim lighting in the cabin was no longer fuzzy and she felt something slick coating his fingers, her heart pounding as wildly in her chest as a set of drums and her legs shaking like a leaf in a thunderstorm just like the one outside. At least she had been facing away from the inflatable tube man, a small comfort that was worth much more than one would expect, she found, blushing even harder when Joseph pressed a gentle kiss to her neck, followed by a few not-so-gentle kisses around her collarbone and-once he slid her shirt over her head, on one of her breasts as well, sucking on her nipple for a while. She couldn't say how long, exactly, as it felt both too long and not long enough at the same time, even when he did the exact same thing on the other. She supposed it didn't matter, as the rain continued pounding on the ugly tarp over the cabin and the thunder roared outside in steady intervals. 

She knew it would hurt when he turned her around, her legs spread apart as she braced herself for the feeling of him lifting her up and seating her on his cock. It was too much to ask to not expect any pain with someone his size, especially given that she was smaller than average in more ways than one. The brief stinging pain that resulted soon faded into something more dull and less obtrusive, but she didn't dare try to fight through the pain to try to speak complete sentences just yet. He started out slow, or at least if someone else saw them, that's what they would say, although it certainly didn't feel that way to her. Just when the dull, throbbing pain became almost too much, though, the discomfort (gradually at first, then much more quickly,) soon began to give way to something more pleasant, something that filled her with want and left her aching for something she didn't have a name for as he slowly and carefully rubbed his finger in a small, controlled motion-a flash of light sparked behind her eyes when she realized he was rubbing her clit while he was fucking her-how he managed to pull off that particular sort of multitasking was way above her pay-grade and she was by no means due for a metaphorical raise anytime soon. Feeling a bit at odds with herself mentally versus physically, she sighed in a soft, small voice, her eyes closed as he continued, going right back to fucking her just like before after he finished her off. 

By then, despite the cabin being unfortunately small and the couch being unfortunately close to the wall where the inflatable tube man with his menacing gaze was hunched over, Keiko was too far gone to experience mental distress from being so close to its utterly unreasonable, unnatural face, her eyes fluttering open and shut now and then as Joseph picked up the pace. She was so sweaty, she wondered how he managed to hold on to her, noticing that he was far less sweaty though his hands felt far more warm than she ever thought they could. If his hands felt warm, everything else felt even warmer-her own breath, escaping from her lips in soft, gentle sighs and moans, her skin and the unusual feeling of electricity buzzing right under the surface, the flood of heat coiling in her core, blossoming like a flower blooming in the summertime with each forceful thrust that stretched her out to her limit, brushing past all the right spots inside her each time without fail, overriding any sensation of lingering discomfort still present-it was almost too much to process all at once, her thoughts jumping around this way and that like a ball in a pinball machine as he filled her without any room to spare. Even so, she could tell he was being careful, or trying to, at least, using all his self-control to consciously limit how hard he thrust into her and how tight his grip on her thighs was, though he would definitely leave marks later. Despite all his caution, she could barely find the strength to move, finding herself as mobile as a rag-doll while his hands dug into the soft, smooth skin, a few shades removed from ivory, her legs shaking and her round, perky breasts bouncing, except for when he decided to grab one of them, groping her with a not-so-gentle touch as he hummed in a low voice, a few rough, guttural groans and growls rumbling in his throat almost as deep and intense as the thunder outside. 

Sweat soon coated her brow and her legs felt like jelly as he thrust inside her again and again, each vulgar, obscene sound of flesh slapping against flesh echoing in her ear as she felt the heat inside her reach its boiling point, her soaking cunt clenching around him with all of her strength, as meager as it was, but it was enough, and with a low, wordless growl, she felt a hot, sticky heat rush through her, almost exactly in time with her own orgasm, crying out in a high-pitched voice, panting and breathless as her unfocused eyes gazed at nothing in particular, and then before she knew it, the next time she opened her eyes, she was back in the real world, whatever that was, with all the shitty design flaws that had led to it becoming the crapsack of failure that it was, though for once, she was safe in someone else's arms-someone who had no intention of hurting her-at least not on purpose. 

When she looked around, she realized she was lying on the couch, her limbs feeling almost as heavy as her eyelids as she contemplated reaching for a stray pillow to put under her head, except when she tried to move, she fell off the couch with a startled scream, as she couldn't move her legs. 

Several questions entered and just as rapidly left her mind as Joseph pressed a kiss to her forehead after she felt him curl up next to her, pulling her on top of him so her head was on his chest. It was still raining sideways, the loud claps of thunder not quite as loud as before as she felt her eyelids grow heavy again, finding it difficult to muster the energy to search for a reason to fight off the sensation. If she couldn't walk tomorrow, she might just have to punch him in the balls, she decided with minimal emotional fanfare, but there was no point in borrowing tomorrow's problems today, she told herself, still half-dead to the world as her chest rose and fell with each heavy, labored breath on her part and the slickness on her thighs began to dry off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DND dice are dice used in Dungeons and Dragons.


	6. 5

One moment, Keiko was hauling ass across what remained of a mediocre industrial town with a single backpack on her back holding all of her belongings, the next (or at least that was what it felt like,) she was holding two backpacks, one larger than herself, to her chest as she stared in the murky water of an algae-covered lake while Joseph paddled the canoe they were both sitting in. As the lake they had stumbled on was large enough that they couldn't see the end of it on either side and there was no point in turning around, they figured the lonely old canoe resting by the shore was their only bet if they ever wanted to encounter human civilization again and just like that, there they were, paddling across a lake so dull and lonely that their only company was something large with equally large tentacles swimming around underwater that was quite unhappy about being disturbed and was simply biding its time for the right moment to rid its home of the unwanted intruders. 

With the hot sun beating down on them and not even a frog or a cricket in eyesight to break up the intense, soul-crushing monotony, Keiko wondered about all sorts of things-like how long it would take her to die of heat stroke, whether the rest of the human race had ever existed or if she had just imagined it, and why there was an odd shape behind her blurry reflection in the water. 

_____

"Well, looks like someone's angry." If she hadn't been too busy being frozen in terror, Keiko might have responded to Joseph when the large, hideous aquatic life-form reared its ugly head, 15 eyes, 4 rows of teeth, 40 tentacles, and all. "I've seen worse back home though." 

"Joseph, watch out!" 

_____

How long had it been since she started screaming, she wondered as she began to forget the sound of her own voice even as she continued to scream so loud she could barely hear her own thoughts. When the ugly monster first rose from the water, Joseph picked up a hunting knife he had and leapt from the canoe to stab it in its bad eye (the 3rd one from the right on the first of its 3 rows of eyes,) but before Keiko even had a chance to blink, it grabbed him, sliding a tentacle up his shirt and another down his pants. 

The awful pounding sound flooding her ears certainly didn't help matters in her opinion, unaware that it was the sound of her own heartbeat beating away much faster than it should have. Perhaps it was for the best, however, as it rendered her deaf to the unspeakable sounds of the monster deciding to examine the larger of the two intruders who had so rudely interrupted its daily afternoon swim in a very up close and personal way. Maybe she really would go deaf soon, she thought, a comforting thought if there ever was one-hearing was quite an overrated sense, she decided, her throat raw and her lungs burning from screaming though she had long since forgotten how to stop. Truly, it was a shame she had never gone deaf after all, she thought as she felt her strength fading and darkness threatening to swallow her up, especially when a rain of bullets broke the water's surface-"That can't be good..." she thought when she coughed and a gross blob of bright red blood splattered on her shirt; shielding herself from the bullets as best as she could by hiding behind the two backpacks on the canoe. It didn't last, however, nothing ever does-acknowledging the cruelty was too much to bear, she decided as she felt the water rise, taking her-canoe, backpacks, and all, to the distant shore on the opposite side of the lake while her consciousness faded away. 

The next time her eyes opened, Keiko coughed again, hacking up some lake water-before she could struggle in an attempt to sit up, she felt a familiar pair of strong, muscular arms wrap around her tighter, a sudden wave of heat burning her cheeks as she realized how close she was to the man holding her. 

"Ugh, don't tell me it's morning already." a familiar voice under her muttered, the sun slowly sinking below the horizon. 

"I don't think it is. " her voice was weak and it hurt to talk but she noticed the corners of Joseph's mouth turn upwards when he heard her voice. "More importantly, though-" she asked, struggling to process what she saw happen to him earlier "do you know if that thing that attacked us was killed?" 

"What thing?" 

Keiko did her best to push whatever emotions his response brought to life inside her back in the corner of her brain where she kept all the things that were too uncomfortable to think about as he threaded his fingers through her soft pink curls. 

"You know, the monster-the thing that-well, uh-" she swallowed hard, wincing in pain since her throat was still raw from all the screaming she had done earlier. "it was, uh, very interested in you. You know, like physically." 

It hurt to finish that particular sentence in more ways than one but there was no avoiding the explaining that had to be done. All that was left to do now was wait, she knew as much for certain as she held her breath, wondering how he would respond. 

"Yeah, doesn't ring a bell." Keiko squeaked when Joseph held her closer, brushing some of her hair out of her face. "Damn, am I tired though, I'm taking a nap." 

Keiko winced a little when she swallowed again, though the pain wasn't as bad as before, her face still far too warm as Joseph stroked her hair one last time before falling asleep. "Well, there's always an end to everything." Keiko reassured herself, glad that even if their problems were far from over, at least the day was.


	7. 6

There, in the distance, on that warm summer day was a sunny, beautiful beach. The sand was almost as white as the clouds in the sky and almost as soft as powder. Judging by the warm weather with a cool breeze and not even the tiniest bit of excess humidity, the white puffy clouds that looked like marshmallows, the gentle, soothing sound of the waves crashing against the shore, Keiko felt convinced the beach was the single most perfect beach to exist in the entire universe. Since there was nobody else around, she figured, might as well enjoy the water-it wasn't like her social anxiety could ruin it now. 

Taking off at a running start, her feet hit the soft white sand several times before she felt the cool spray of the ocean water, the fresh, salty smell in the air filling her lungs and bringing a smile to her face. The water was warm-the perfect temperature to run straight into it without a care in the world, running until-

After noticing the sudden darkness, then realizing a second or two later why it was so dark, Keiko felt the hard thing pressing against her thigh before she saw it, her body responding accordingly by drawing her attention to a certain warmth pulling low in her body. Opening her eyes at the exact wrong moment, Keiko looked up at the large, muscular man whose arms she was trapped in, as dead to the world as the bed they were lying on-whatever he was dreaming about, Keiko was about to become a part of it if she couldn't escape from his arms. Considering how tightly he was holding her, leaning in to kiss her without realizing what he was doing, Keiko might as well have been glued to him with gorilla grip strength glue. It was only when she heard the odd thumping sound ringing in her ears several dozen times that she realized it was her heart pounding-

"Damn, my head hurts..." Keiko was still breathless and frozen in terror when, after screaming at the top of her lungs, Joseph woke up, falling off the twin bed they had been lying in in mere seconds after waking up and reaching to grab onto something that didn't exist to keep his balance.

Keiko had nightmares on a regular basis, so having a dream that wasn't completely horrible should have been a warning sign-she shook her head, slapping her own face to try to snap herself out of her uncomfortable mood when she realized how naked Joseph was (which, being at least twice her size and more than twice her height, there was a lot of well, him.) Luckily, she still had clothes on, just like she had when they had gone to bed a few hours ago. Then again, so did he at the time and she wasn't about to ask how that changed. 

It's too early for this,Keiko told herself-a lie, of course. There was never a good time for any of-whatever this was. She could only stare at a random point on the wall and pretend it was really interesting when Joseph sat down on the end of the bed, a piece of furniture more appropriately sized for a child or young teenager than a 6 foot 9 adult man, sighing to himself as he glanced around the room before turning to her. 

"Usually it doesn't hurt this bad unless I've been drinking." he continued like nothing was wrong and he wasn't sitting on a bed that belonged to neither of them as naked as the day he had been born. "Then again, maybe it's because I need a drink." 

Unfortunately for everyone involved, the wall Keiko was staring at was far from interesting-it's even beige, she thought with an increasing sense of dread as it grew harder and harder to ignore the fact that there was no way for her to move off the bed without getting an eyeful of-

Oh, what's the use-Keiko took a deep breath-it was now or never-

"I'm gonna go get ready since we should be leaving soon." 

Without waiting for a response, Keiko stepped carefully on the creaky floor to avoid making too much noise and scaring herself again like she did when she got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, making her way to the door that led to the bathroom, sighing in relief when she found her stuff on the sink counter where she had placed it the night before-now I can finally clean up after-

One look in the mirror and Keiko's face was almost the same color as her hair, her back pressed against the wall seconds later and her heart thumping in her chest like a bass beat on a bad set of speakers. Despite the abandoned house they had broken into lacking any heating or air conditioning, she might as well have been tossed into a sauna just then. 

"Joseph?" 

"What?" 

A glass of water would have been great just then, but Keiko would have traded that to get rid of the sudden sensation of warmth curling in her stomach, spreading through her body like a flower blossoming. There were no flowers nearby, or anything else pleasant to look at except for the man standing far too close to her just then, close enough that she could feel his body heat-feel the firmness of his well-defined muscles if she was bold enough to. Though even just opening her mouth felt like wading through a pool of quicksand, Keiko grit her teeth and did it anyways, ignoring the devilish grin on his face, the gleam of light in his violet eyes, and the all-too-perfect view of his athletic, muscled body. 

"Do you need something?" 

Joseph's face was difficult to read, but the look in his eyes made her that much more aware of how her face was flushing. "Well, it'd be nice if we had a vehicle, but if you could have done anything about it, I would have already asked." They did need a vehicle, but she knew he didn't care about that at the moment. "I suppose there's something you can help me with if you'd like, however." 

Keiko found herself unable to swallow, a shock-wave of heat sparking insider her that made her feel like she should be sweating, but nothing came of it except her face growing warmer, the burning in her cheeks spreading to her ears. Unlike Joseph, her skin was light enough that all her embarrassment was visible on her face no matter what sort of state she was in, the thought only adding to her troubles. "And what-what exactly would that be?" 

Her throat was so tight it hurt to speak above a whisper but somehow she mustered the strength to speak up regardless. Joseph was far too handsome for his own good-or hers, for that matter. Despite traveling together long enough that memories of her life before began to blend together, tiny details fading away here and there like stars in the sky going out at the end of their natural lifespans, Keiko had never been able to shake the feeling that she would never know him as well as she should. He wasn't unpleasant by any means, and his smile was as genuine as anyone else's, but some instinct inside her, something far older and more complex than she could ever begin to unravel, told her that something was missing inside him. It lacked a name, and thus she had no words to describe it, but despite him treating her with nothing less than true, honest kindness, she felt certain she could never feel the same way about him as he felt about her. 

Keiko swallowed hard, balling her right hand into a fist (her other hand was busy holding a hairbrush.) As lovely as the distraction in front of her was for her eyes, it was far less so for her mind-they both knew they needed to leave, and soon. It was only by pure chance and luck that they stumbled upon an abandoned house with running water and electricity-a rare combination, one that grew rarer by the day-the chance that their luck would soon run out again was too great to ignore for long. 

"You could call it an itch that could use some scratching, to put it one way." Being burdened with the weight of a constant feeling of terror that clung to her regardless of her circumstances, Keiko had never developed proper social skills, but Joseph was even worse than she was in that regard. Still, after the two of the met, he soon realized that being as blunt as he usually was would scare her off, so he learned to temper his impulses slightly-still nowhere near enough to allow him to function living a normal life, but it was a start, at least in his own mind. "And I could help you too if you've got your own itch to scratch, of course." 

"I-I'm not sure I'd be that much help." Keiko squeaked after Joseph took her free hand in his own, rubbing it a little-any more, and it would have been too hard. 

Keiko couldn't fault him much for that, however-given his strength, it was to be expected, and he tried to control it to the best of his ability. As odd as some of his mannerisms were, she knew he could never bring himself to hurt her purposely. 

"You overthink things sometimes-" Keiko tasted the metallic tang of blood as she accidentally bit down on her bottom lip when he stroked the side of her face, his fingers brushing against her curly pink hair in the process. His hands were far too warm, just like the pool of heat coiling in her stomach. "I wouldn't ask if I wasn't interested." 

She might have responded if he hadn't brushed the pad of his thumb over her bottom lip, smearing some of the blood there across her lips and chin. As it was, it was all she could do to stay standing on her own two feet, her legs shaking like jelly as he hummed to himself in a self-satisfied tone.

"Come on, you don't have to be shy-we can have some fun if you want, what do you say?" 

A sudden rush of air Keiko hadn't been aware she was holding left her lungs as she exhaled quickly, her heart still racing and her legs still shaking. "Maybe later-once we get far enough away from here, I'll see how I feel." 

It was rare that Keiko ever spoke to anyone honestly, without hiding some piece of information she thought might upset them, but then, there was a first for everything, right? 

"Ah, well, you're probably right-we did agree that we shouldn't spend too much time here." The look on his face suggested genuine disappointment, but tempered with enough understanding that Keiko didn't feel threatened. She didn't have the chance to move out of the way before he kissed her on the forehead, though, but even if she had, she wasn't sure if she would have moved out of the way. "I know I shouldn't tease you but it's too much fun to watch you get all flustered." 

In some ways, Joseph was a more honest person than she was, and it made her feel guilty. Regardless, Keiko sighed in relief when he left to go search for his clothes, washing her face and fixing her hair quickly before throwing on the old sweatshirt she had found a few weeks back and heading back into the bedroom to put on her shoes and grab her bag. 

______

Half an hour later, having just snuck out the back door, Joseph and Keiko recognized the familiar feeling of the oppressive heat wave they had been dealing with for weeks, lamenting the fact that they currently lacked a vehicle. 

"Here's hoping whoever owns this place doesn't find out we were here-" 

Joseph barely had time to finish his sentence when the house descended into a sinkhole that formed underneath it without warning, swallowing the entire structure in mere seconds, leaving Joseph just enough time to scoop Keiko into his arms and run a safe distance away before they could join the house in its unfortunate fate. After both of them stared unblinking at the massive hole in front of them where the house used to be, they each independently reached the same conclusion, and that conclusion involved one simple action. 

Within minutes, an armored vehicle stopped a few feet short of the sinkhole, its driver and other occupants staring in a combination of disbelief and anger at the sight in front of them. 

"What the-" one of the occupants muttered, gaping in shock at the enormous sinkhole, the driver of the vehicle gazing off in the distance at something only he could see. 

"It looks like we have company-or had." The driver acknowledged, noticing a slight disturbance in the ground on the other side of the sinkhole that no one else in his crew noticed, one that suggested the presence of others prior to the event that had so unceremoniously destroyed the house he claimed as his own. "Perhaps we should pay them a little visit."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gorilla glue is this stuff: https://www.gorillatough.com/product/gorilla-super-glue/


	8. 7

Somewhere by the dense thicket of trees behind the large fancy house, Keiko spotted a trampoline. Upon further inspection, it was perfectly undamaged, and odd thing given that it was the middle of the apocalypse. 

"What's that?" 

Keiko turned to see Joseph, who was carrying all their supplies in a backpack that weighed more than she did, standing a few inches behind her, his expression revealing a level of genuine confusion. 

"It's a trampoline. Originally they were used for athletes to practice gymnastics and acrobatics on but now people just use them for fun." 

Joseph seemed puzzled for a moment before shrugging his shoulders, taking off his backpack, and leaped on without a word. After dragging the bag by the trampoline and covering it with some debris lying around to hide it, Keiko eyed the trampoline, wondering how to get on it since there was no stepladder and it was a bit too high for her to jump on until Joseph picked her up in one effortless motion, setting her down without breaking a sweat. Before she could even blink, Keiko found herself eye-to-eye with a large sparrow perching on the topmost tree branch in a nearby tree. 

"Sorry about that, seems like I haven't quite gotten the hang of this yet." Joseph told Keiko after accidentally sending her several feet in the air, holding her while she waited for her heart rate to return to normal. 

You think I would think about these things, Keiko scolded herself as Joseph put her down again, jumping in a much more careful way, like someone jumping rope until he got a good feel for how much of his strength was necessary for using a trampoline. 

"No, it's okay, that was my fault for not explaining it better." Keiko told him while he did some kind of flip, followed by a series of kicks and strikes-probably some kind of martial arts, she assumed, having little knowledge of the subject. Sports were never her thing, though she knew based on what they been through so far that Joseph seemed to know some form of martial arts or something similar. 

At the time, jumping on the trampoline likely wasn't the most logical use of their time, but it felt so nice to just do something fun for its own sake that she jumped a little anyways-not nearly as high as Joseph could, of course, quietly impressed by the way he controlled his movements-even when he jumped without leading into some other movement, he had an effortless way of making it look as natural as breathing, without so much as the slightest sign of exertion on his face at all. Having only a mediocre level of stamina herself, Keiko began to feel tired after a few minutes, using the last bit of her energy to jump as high as she could and succeeding mostly in falling on top of Joseph, who caught her after she ran out of energy. 

It was quiet enough that the loudest thing Keiko heard was a heartbeat-whether it belonged to her or Joseph was a question she never discovered the answer to because Joseph pulled her up close enough to his face to kiss her cheek, then went in for what she could only assume was a kiss on the mouth before she pressed her hands on his chest to stop him. 

"Shouldn't we go inside?" 

Keiko looked up at the sky while she waited for a response. There was about an hour until sunset at most and there was no telling what might be in the woods at night (aside from the fact that whatever it was wasn't good.) 

"That depends on what's inside. We know what's out here but there could be anything inside the house." 

It didn't come as too much of a shock that they didn't see eye to eye on the issue-the weather was mild and the trampoline was high enough off the ground and had a barrier around it that would keep most things out. On the other hand, unlike Joseph, Keiko wasn't used to sleeping outside-she did what she had to after the world went to hell in a hand-basket (and not even a good hand-basket, to add insult to injury,) but Joseph, who had grown up without ever living in a set of four walls and a roof inside a city and sleeping on a mattress, saw nothing weird about sleeping on any decently comfortable surface outside when the weather allowed it. 

"That's true, but there's...well, you know..." Keiko didn't like bringing them up anymore than necessary. "those-and who knows who else might be wandering around nearby?" 

"If the fence doesn't keep them out, I will." 

It was true that there was a tall, sturdy wooden fence at least as tall as a regular man surrounding the house and the backyard, trampoline and all, but given the kind of behavior Keiko had seen from people growing up, a fence made her feel about as comfortable as wearing a pair of sandals in a lab filled with dangerous chemicals. After all the time they had spent traveling together, Keiko still didn't have a clear picture of what kind of life Joseph had before they met, aside from the fact that he had earned money as a professional fighter for a period of time, and some of the things he ignored or showed no concern about left her with an odd feeling. They had broken into what used to be someone's house (or backyard, at the very least,) that appeared for all intents and purposes to have been abandoned years ago, but Joseph decided to make a move on her without any concern that they were outside, with no walls around them or a roof over their heads, not even a cave to shelter in. It was disconcerting, to say the least, even this far into the apocalypse-the logic he provided, that there was no one around just then-proved only to make that feeling all that more apparent. 

In another set of circumstances, Keiko might have worked up the courage to pick his brain enough to figure what was going on in there, but it was late enough that all she wanted was to get inside somewhere safe-anything else could be worried about later. "What if it rains?" 

Joseph's expression didn't offer much of a clue about how he felt, but he sounded unbothered when he answered. "Fair enough." 

As Joseph stopped by the back door, Keiko waiting a few feet away, he paused a moment. To a random observer, it might have looked like he wasn't doing anything but Keiko realized he was probably listening to see if there was anyone-or anything, inside. With an indifferent expression on his face, he kicked down the door, stepping on top of it as he glanced around the dark room on the other side of the door. After giving Keiko a gesture letting her know to follow him, they barely made it 5 steps inside before seeing something-

_______

Keiko could read books and papers and whip up research papers and essays like nobody's business, but describing things-especially things like what they just saw-was a much more difficult task. Breathing hard and shaking like a leaf, Keiko hid behind a tall wood beam, pulling her knees to her chest and hiding her face as much as possible when she heard something she was confident was never something meant to be heard by people, a layer of goosebumps covering her skin as she waited. For what, she didn't know, only that, being too scared to move any farther, but all she could do was wait, so she did just that, only choosing not to cover her ears because she knew, with a knowledge much older and more instinctual than anything in her conscious mind, that it wouldn't help. 

Five minutes later, Joseph staggered out of the house, minus the jacket he had been wearing for a few weeks after stealing it off a dead biker, a lost look in his eyes suggesting that his conscious brain was protecting him from fully understanding whatever they had just seen in there and whatever he had (as far as she could tell,) had killed. At least, she could only hope it was dead-whatever it was, it certainly didn't look like any living thing was supposed to look like. When he met her timid, fearful gaze, they stared at each other for some time, until at some point, Keiko understood that whatever was in there, it was gone and wasn't coming back. 

_________

After wordlessly hopping back on the trampoline and covering the thin opening in the mesh barrier surrounding it with a large blanket, Joseph scooped Keiko in his arms, seating her on his lap while he gave her ass a firm squeeze, Keiko forgetting how to breathe for a moment when he smashed his lips against hers. He was by no means a gentle kisser and only gave her a few breaks for air before pushing her down on her back and snaking a hand up her dress, ripping off her panties in one swift motion, discarding the thin piece of fabric to the side. 

The sun was just beginning to set, painting the sky in a variety of pink, red, and orange hues, all very pretty but to Keiko, it just looked like a hazy mass of color. It was hard to focus her vision on anything, let alone form coherent thoughts about whatever she was looking at, thanks to the quick, clever way Joseph moved his fingers, whatever that was. She couldn't have described exactly what he was doing with them if someone paid her, but it felt good, causing her to slap her hand over her mouth to avoid making too much noise. People in horror movies had died in similar circumstances, after all. Beyond that, she didn't recall having any thought about anything in particular running through her mind, everything slowly blending into an indistinct hazy mess of feelings that demanded attention-attention which she was receiving in a plentiful amount, more than anything she could have dreamed of, and not just because when she was younger, her mother told her she was an ugly useless wallflower that would amount to nothing and would repel anyone. 

It hurt a little when Joseph bit her neck, a little more as he groped her here and there and just about everywhere, paying a little less attention to his own strength than he should have, and a little more than that when he grabbed both her hands by the wrists, pinning them down above her head, but it was nothing that bothered her-she had gone through much worse, after all, albeit in a much different context, and then done by someone who was causing her pain on purpose. A few tears welled in her eyes anyways while he kissed her up and down her body, stopping and letting go of her wrists when he noticed. 

"Too much?" Keiko shook her head in response. 

"No-just-maybe go a little slower." 

With a quick nod, Joseph pulled her close to him, kissing her face while he bent and curled his fingers inside her again, making sure without the slightest room for doubt that she was ready, pulling her close to him when she was and pushing himself inside her without so much as a warning. The sooner, the better, she thought-if it was going to hurt, might as well get it over with, and if not, well...

Planting his hands on her shoulders, he began at a slow pace, thrusting in and out without doing anything specific, carefully observing her reaction. Though she struggled to adjust to the sensation at first, soon the rhythm he built up, faster as time went on, became deliciously satisfying, fulfilling a certain craving she was too terrified to admit to having, at least to other people. She had always thought it pleasant to find someone nice to share her life with and to sleep with, it was just that all of her dreams involved finding someone well....different. Keiko had never met anyone much like Joseph before, and after meeting him, assumed she would never meet anyone else like him again. Even he didn't seem to believe that he would meet anyone like himself either, a prospect he seemed to think as natural as the sun rising every morning or the earth rotating around the sun. After what had to, at the very least, have been weeks, and was probably closer to months at this point, of traveling with him, she couldn't find any reason to not believe him. 

Those sorts of thoughts, however, though something that had floated through her mind earlier, were nowhere on her radar now. Anything that existed outside the feeling of being fucked the way she was right now-hard and fast, with a brutal, consistent rhythm, filling her up as much as she could handle with each and every thrust of his hips, might as well have been as far away as the edge of the universe. Covered in a thin layer of sweat, her cheeks burning and a strange, terrifying warmth curling inside her stomach, it was all she could do not to scream. No doubt he would have preferred if she had, but if she allowed herself to, the most likely outcome would involve them being eaten alive by whatever was lurking in the forest. 

Clapping her hand over her mouth and squeezing her eyes shut, Keiko made no move to resist or change position when he lifted her legs up, grabbing onto her thighs as if he had no choice but to dig his hands into them or die trying. Though he was much less sweaty than she was, barely dipping into his seemingly endless stamina, the occasional low, guttural grunts and groans he made, muttering half-murmured obscenities under his breath in between made her heart feel all aflutter, the terribly frustrating pulsing throbbing heat inside her reaching a boiling point, the sound of her own blood rushing through her veins thrumming in her ears leaving her dead to the rest of the world, unknowing and uncaring of whatever else was happening anywhere across the shitty rock hurtling through space 67,000 miles per hour. 

With a few more intense thrusts, delivered with as much enthusiasm as she could assume anyone was capable of mustering, his hips finally stilled, every inch of his cock that managed to fit inside her (more than she would have expected,) staying inside her until there was nothing left. It didn't matter, considering she had begun missing her period some time ago, around the time when her old clothes became too loose on her and the roundness in her face morphed into something more hollow looking. She couldn't fault Joseph for it-he was skilled enough to hunt and gather as much food as there was available, but her appetite had sunk dangerously close to rock bottom right alongside her mental health at the start of their journey and had yet to bounce back to a healthy level. 

There was some residual pain, which was to be expected, after he pulled out, the aching of sore muscles in her legs and the feeling of liquid warmth still inside her leaving her unwilling to do anything more than lie on her back staring straight up into what now might as well have been a vast, impenetrable void for how dark it was. Had it not been so dark out, she might have been disgusted if she looked down at what was leaking from her still throbbing cunt-it was easy to be grossed out when she lived with the constant weight of her dark mood hanging onto her with a vice grip, always trying to distract her by telling her awful things about herself. She might or might not have had a few tears fall from her eyes, but she was too tired for all that. At least when Joseph decided to fuck her, he was considerate enough to fuck her hard enough that she forgot about all the awful shit that upset her while he was doing it. Most people she had met were a lot less thoughtful than that, after all. 

Soon, she realized, in her current state, sleep would come for her, but for now, she turned her gaze to the lone star she saw twinkling in the sky, focusing her gaze on the tiny light while Joseph wrapped his arms around her, drawing her close to his broad, smooth chest, close enough for her to feel the firm, dense muscles there, close enough to hear his heartbeat. Maybe things weren't so bad all the time after all. A world, no matter how terrible, that allowed her this level of comfort, even if just for a short while, was a world that had a chance to improve, perhaps. And for just then, that was enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Information about how fast the earth moves around the sun: https://www.space.com/33527-how-fast-is-earth-moving.html


	9. 10 fun facts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 10 fun facts about these two that may or may not add something to your reading experience.

Joseph: 

\- He reads at about a 2nd grade level but also likes to use big words in conversations sometimes just to fuck with people.

\- He killed a grown man at 12 years old without using any weapons. 

\- Though he has a perfect photographic memory, he keeps a single photograph with him at all times and only shows it to a very limited number of people he trusts extremely well.

\- Due to his physical build and unusual metabolism, he's survived taking combinations of various illegal drugs that would kill most people and, unfortunately, has developed at least a certain level of tolerance to just about every known painkiller and sedative (including drugs used to tranquilize large animals.) 

\- He has an unexpected passion for interior design, although his idea of aesthetically pleasing decorating isn't very trendy.

\- He once beat several men to death with a heavy machine gun during a fight (without ever actually shooting the gun) and he was the only survivor. 

\- He once adopted a large one-eyed siberian husky when he was young. 

\- When he was younger, a group of government officials paid him to help them extract information out of a criminal. The way they had him assist them was by telling him to kick the guy in the nuts as hard as possible, and he later blew the money on buying a few exotic animals from a zoo, some hookers, some coke, and a 72-inch flat screen TV.

\- He was once hired to be in an Old Spice commercial, the incident ended in $500 million worth of accidental property damage, a drug bust in a crack house, and the dissolving of an entire news reporting outlet. 

\- Despite living in a time period at least several centuries removed from any time where she would be alive, he has a crush on Shakira. 

Keiko: 

\- When she was a baby/toddler, her father used to read to her from large science and history textbooks. 

\- She speaks English, Japanese, French, Spanish, and German fluently.

\- She has the second-highest IQ of anyone on the entire planet during her lifetime. 

\- Her favorite animals are dolphins, flamingos, mice, and dogs.

\- Her favorite colors are light pink and light blue.

\- She used to have a dog (a mutt with tannish-brown fur) named Ferdinand.

\- She has no piercings or tattoos. 

\- Her mother was married to a different man before getting married to her father and had a daughter with that man, though her mother never told her about it. 

\- Her mother's sister married a guy who wanted to start a revival of Norse Paganism and they created their own weird commune out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. 

\- When she gets really stressed out or nervous, she gets the urge to hide her face until the feelings go away.


	10. technically chapter 8

Waking up warm and cozy in bed wasn't usually a bad thing, but it was pitch dark outside (as well as inside, as the only light available was a small flashlight on the nightstand,) and Keiko realized as soon as she opened her eyes that drinking half a bottle of Gatorade Frost Arctic Blitz Gatorade (regrettably the only flavor of Gatorade that seemed to be available after the apocalypse) 5 minutes before going to bed was a bad idea. 

"Here goes nothing." After slowly (very) and carefully (almost painfully so, as she almost twisted her ankle in the process trying to get out of Joseph's vice grip,) getting out of bed, reaching for the flashlight on the nightstand, and making her way to and back from the bathroom, she set down the flashlight on the nightstand as quietly as possible, then did her best to climb back into the only bed in the tiny apartment she was stuck sharing with Joseph. 

All's well that ends well, she supposed, but then, things did not end well, as her hand made contact with something warm and sort of hard and she heard a low hum and she realized the accident she made too late. 

_____

"Well, that was different." Joseph remarked after throwing a broken riot gear helmet through an equally broken window, Keiko cringing when she heard the clunk sound it made when it hit the ground. 

The zombie in a SWAT officer uniform that had been shambling around behind a giant vending machine didn't last two seconds before Joseph slammed it into a wall hard enough to smash its helmet and the skull inside it, Keiko cringing a little when she saw Joseph rip off its helmet after killing it. 

Keiko was certainly not the kind of person who would try to steal a helmet (or anything else you could wear) off an exterminated zombie, but Joseph had no problem stealing from live people, much less dead ones and by now, it took a lot more to faze her. Still, she wondered whether he really thought he could clean the zombie brains off the helmet, considering it had been a long time since they had seen things like soap and running water. Aside from the vending machine and some boarded-up store fronts from stores that went out of business long before the dead corpses buried outside the small town had made their way inside, the only notable landmark nearby was what appeared to be a long-abandoned apartment complex, most likely for low-income housing if Keiko had to take a guess. 

Being fortunate enough to avoid having to live in one of those hellholes, Keiko had never seen the inside of one and given what little she knew of Joseph's past. she could only assume the same held true for him. Still, when she turned her gaze towards the sky, it looked like it was going to rain and they needed shelter for the night, something with an actual roof. 

"I wonder if there's anyone in there." 

Keiko would have assumed no, but then, she learned a while ago not to assume much of anything anymore. Weirder things had happened on their unfortunate journey, after all, and that was all she allowed herself to think about the subject for the time being. 

"It looks abandoned, but that doesn't mean much." Joseph was one of those people who acted on whatever impulses they had without showing any outward indication that they took time to think things through first but as Keiko realized long ago, judging people by appearances was always a mistake. "If we find anyone, what should we tell them?" 

Joseph shrugged, displaying no signs that he was any more concerned than usual. "Depends on who they are, I guess. And there's only one way to find out." 

When they made their gamble and walked inside the building through a blown-out door, they discovered nothing and found no living-or moving-creatures except for a fox with a nametag that said "Jeremy" on it. 

_______

"Here, boy, catch!" Joseph tossed a crumpled-up newspaper ball at "Jeremy," watching as the fox ran to catch it, trying to chew on it until it realized how nasty newspaper tasted. 

About 5 minutes of wandering around led Joseph and Keiko to a small apartment that was free of anything that moved or was supposed to move, complete with a few scattered cans of food in the pantry and a few bars of soap in the bathroom cabinet, plus a few gallons of water in large sealed containers. The furniture was all gone, save for a bed in the single bedroom and the nightstand next to it unless they counted a nifty little cat play structure built out of cheap plywood on one end of the living room area. 

"Jeremy," seemed content to follow them so they didn't bother freaking out about letting him tag along, petting him once Keiko was sure he didn't have rabies and playing fetch with him until the full blown rainstorm that had started outside faded away, revealing that the sun was setting. The expression "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye" came to mind when Joseph asked Keiko if she wanted to go to sleep. 

Nobody lost an eye (or any other body part,) but Keiko had to fight the urge to hide her face in her hands when they checked the bedroom and found nothing but the single bed and the nightstand, Joseph wasting no time in pulling his shirt over his head and taking off everything else but his underwear (Keiko hardly noticed him take off his shoes first,) her mouth suddenly feeling as dry as the desert. Having eyes sure had its ups and downs, she decided, sucking her teeth in a nameless combination of emotions as Joseph plopped down on the bed like it was nothing ("Jeremy" had conked out in one of the box-shaped compartments of the cat play structure a few minutes ago.) 

"Is something wrong?" 

"No." Keiko lied, like a dishonest two-faced liar, sitting down on the edge of the bed hoping against hope that her nerves would calm down. "I'm just tired." 

"Aw, come on, don't give me that look-" Joseph paused, deciding to go ahead and make things worse without warning like he tended to do way too often"-Well, actually, you look extra cute when you look at me like that." 

Keiko had taken off her shoes before sitting down but refused to take off anything else, curling up in the fetal position facing away from him hoping that he wouldn't see her face turn pinker than her hair, Joseph showing no indication of being anything other than oblivious to the mental anguish he was inflicting on the easily-embarrassed anxiety-prone person sharing the bed with him. 

"Hey, I'm just messing with you-" Joseph moved closer to her, brushing some of her curls out of her face, Keiko looking up at him and having no idea what she wanted him to do. It was scary, maybe not quite as scary as the zombies roaming around, but certainly not something that would be conducive to her getting a good night's sleep. "You're much cuter when you're happy, after all." 

"If I ever know what that feels like, that'll be the day." 

Joseph wasn't the kind of person anyone would bet on having high emotional intelligence, but he seemed to pick up on how Keiko felt quickly, almost as quick as she herself did. She wasn't sure if it was flattering or creepy or maybe some weird combination of both, but it made her face feel hot anyways. "Ah, well, if we ever find someplace worth living, that should help at least a little." 

Keiko had to consciously suppress a squeak of something resembling embarrassment when Joseph kissed her forehead, rolling over to go to sleep after pulling the single tattered blanket on the bed closer towards his chin. There was plenty of blanket left for her so she swallowed all the different feelings rolling around inside her brain like bowling balls and closed her eyes, steadying her breathing and hoping that sleep would find her. 

They had both been facing away from each other then, Keiko realized, so how she had woken up with his arm around her was a mystery, not that it mattered anymore after she felt what she accidentally touched. 

"Mmm...." 

Oh God-Keiko's mistake loomed heavy on her mind, making her wish she could be swallowed up by a sinkhole when Joseph, who was still sound asleep, pulled her closer to him. Squirming out of his gorilla glue strength grip was bad enough the first time, having to attempt it a second time would probably result in her breaking something. He was as unconsciousness as their new furry friend snoozing in the other room so it wasn't like he had any idea what he was doing, making anger pointless, sending her straight towards painful embarrassment like if Rafiki decided to yeet Simba off the top of Pride Rock instead of holding him up for everyone to see. 

"Doesn't seem like it's morning yet." 

Oh, thank God he woke up-Keiko froze once her thought sunk in, her eyes threatening to bulge out of her head, feeling Joseph's hand rest dangerously close to her ass, which was covered only by a small pair of pink shorts. Is this how I die? Keiko, despite making better grades in school and university than anyone in recorded history since the presidency of the 79th president of America and scoring higher on an IQ test than any other citizen of the New Republic of America, found herself dumbfounded by the sheer lack of ideas she had on how to handle the situation she was in. All alone in the world, except for the huge towering giant of a man holding her in his arms, there was nothing to do, Keiko decided. Nothing unless she felt her life was in danger, which was false. 

Joseph was no model of mental stability and some of the things he said left her at a complete loss, but nothing he had ever done left her with the impression that she was in any more danger being with him than being anywhere else in the world. Still, his hand was awfully close to her ass and it was awfully late. Like middle of the night, it's pitch dark outside and so quiet there isn't even a stray owl hooting outside late. 

"That's because it isn't." 

"Figured as much." Joseph was far too calm for someone occupying a bed in an abandoned low-income apartment complex in the middle of the apocalypse. "It would be a shame if either of us had to leave this bed right now." 

For once, he hadn't immediately jinxed them with some bizarre disaster, as was usually the case whenever one of them mentioned something about being able to relax for a while. Keiko wasn't sure how she felt about it in terms of emotions but she knew her face felt just as hot as it had that moment a few hours ago before he rolled over and allowed her to go to sleep. 

"It's pretty comfortable..." The sound of rain starting up again was just noticeable enough to distract her for a moment from the sound of Joseph's heartbeat and the sound of her own less than relaxed breathing. The mattress itself was mediocre at best, but it was warm-just the right kind of warm that, in any other circumstances would make Keiko fall asleep at the drop of a hat. This was, in fact, not any other circumstance-it was the kind of situation that was such a perfect combination of cliched and convoluted that Keiko could practically hear the sound of slow, overplayed smooth R&B in her head-not even the classy kind. If the situation she was in had a particular soundtrack, it would be something that would play inside of Snoop Dogg's head when he got high (one of her mentors in the internship she had started a week and a half before the apocalypse had a rather non-discriminating taste in music to put it one way.) 

"Yeah. I'm glad it's not morning yet." Despite how dark it was, Keiko could tell Joseph's face was way too close to hers.

Now would be a good time to abort this conversation-"Perfect time to go back to sleep." 

Joseph would be lying if he claimed not to feel a twinge of disappointment, but he was glad enough to be where he was at the moment not to feel inclined to complain. 

"True. See you in the morning." 

Closing her eyes, Keiko took a deep breath, enjoying the brief flash of momentary calm that washed over her, focusing on the soft patter of the rain hitting the roof. Rain was never her favorite weather, but perhaps sometimes it wasn't so bad after all.


	11. 9

Meeting people was a rare thing in the middle of the apocalypse, and meeting decent people even more so. If they happened to make all their decision by having everyone sit in a circle and hold a talking stick while they put in their two cents, well, compared to all the other shit Keiko had to deal with after the end of the world, it wasn't that big of a deal.

"Anyways, I'm sorry to drag you two into this whole mess, but there's really no better way to do this and believe me, we've tried. I don't care how you do it or how long it takes, but we need you to find some way to kill the pedophile Santa Claus." 

Tom Jones, the fat, balding middle-aged former CEO of a small-time office supply company that barely broke even in the final years before the apocalypse, sounded as apologetic as anyone asking two strangers who happened to stumble upon the office he and 5 of his other former office-mates had been forced to hole up in during the apocalypse could, looking about as happy as someone being forced to watch re-runs of Jersey Shore for 72 hours straight without being able to eat, drink, or sleep. 

Pedophile Santa Claus-Just when she thought she had seen (or heard) it all, there was something else. There was always something else. While Keiko looked frustrated and concerned, Joseph seemed entirely confused-she supposed it made sense, as it wouldn't make any sense for him to know who the hell Santa Claus was. 

"What the fuck is a Santa Claus?" Joseph, who only realized he wasn't holding the talking stick after he spoke, grabbed it from Bill, the frumpy 50-something year old man in an ill-fitting beige suit standing next to Tom, hoisting it over his shoulder while the other people standing in the circle looked on in shock and horror, as the "stick" weighed about as much as 3 large watermelons and was as long as an average-sized anaconda. 

"Santa Claus is a mythical figure based off of a Christian saint who gives gifts to well-behaved children on Christmas." Keiko answered, despite knowing she had no reason to assume Joseph knew anything about Christmas or Christianity (or, most likely, any holidays or religions at all.) "Basically all you need to know is that he's supposed to a friend to children and this guy definitely isn't." 

"So you want us to kill him?" Joseph, as a general rule, seldom showed concern over the prospect of taking human life, and Keiko had seen him kill enough people in enough ways that she wasn't too concerned about him having trouble with dispatching a rogue pedophile impersonating a beloved legendary figure but she found herself wishing that he put in more of an effort to act normal around normal people. 

"Yeah, that's it, really. We've tried everything and the fucker just won't die so if you've got any ideas, go for it." Tom told him after Joseph handed the stick back to him while everyone else gaped at him with confused, concerned expressions. 

Keiko was far from normal herself but she was also far more cautious than the average person so it was easier for her to blend in and not arouse suspicion. 

"Great, where is he?" 

______

"Hey, you sure you two know what you're doing?" Melody, the only woman in the group of office workers, asked Keiko, who was holding a gun Joseph fished off a corpse near the office building a little while ago, Keiko's hands shaking as she aimed it towards the pedophile Santa Claus. 

"Yes, I'm sure. Trust me, I want this to be over as much as anyone so we'll get the job done as quickly as possible." 

Under different circumstances, Joseph would have just walked up to the slimy motherfucker and snapped his neck like a twig, pulling out his spinal cord just to be sure, but Keiko reminded him that the office workers and the 3 and a half dozen other survivors occupying the office building would find that upsetting, so Joseph agreed to a compromise where he would nab the filthy kiddie diddler and let Keiko shoot him. Keiko was no expert with firearms but Joseph promised her he would choke-hold the bastard in point-blank rage.

Melody glanced over in the direction of the coffee room, where Joseph had found the sniveling bloated weasel of a homo sapiens and was currently flinging him up in the air and aiming a roundhouse kick directly to the nuts just to fuck with him. "If you say so." 

Alright, it's now or never, Keiko reminded herself, trying every mental trick in the book to steady her breathing when she saw Joseph drag pedo Claus out of the coffee room, squeezing his neck with one hand until he dropped him to the ground like a sack of potatoes. 

After sharing a look with Joseph that was difficult to describe, Keiko aimed, swallowed despite having had no saliva in her mouth for the last 5 minutes, and pulled the trigger. 

______

Downstairs in the rec room, there was a little party with cups of orange juice in disposable paper cups (the better for composting, insisted Bill,) Chex-Mix, and watered-down beer that was basically 90% water, 9% fancy sparkling water, and 1% beer, but Keiko was in no mood to socialize, curling up in a blanket on a beaten-up old couch in a dark office room with a pull-handle door, hiding under the blanket and staring at nothing but darkness. 

Only the sound of someone opening the door, followed by them turning one of the lights on (the office building had a medium-sized generator thanks to the efforts of one survivor to steal one from a nearby abandoned grocery store,) convinced Keiko to poke her head out from under the blanket. 

"Please warn me before you do that." Keiko disliked when people turned on the lights without warning, ignoring the fact that Joseph picked her up, still wrapped up in the blanket like a burrito, and held her in his lap. 

Keiko had yet to kill anyone for anything other than self-defense up until now and she still felt upset despite the piece of shit obviously deserving it. Then again, what was one more indignity compared to all the rest of the bullshit she had gone through-at least this hadn't involved her getting hurt or worse. Physically she was fine and psychologically, there wasn't really much different going on compared to how she usually felt, so she supposed there was no real reason to complain. 

"Sorry, I came in here for something but I don't remember what it was." Joseph seemed no worse for the wear, as she figured would be the case, glancing down when she poked one of her legs out of the blanket trying to get more comfortable. "Although to be fair, you're much more interesting than anything else here." 

Something about a one-track mind and all that-Keiko knew not to expect much else from him, inhaling a deep breath as she allowed herself to rest her head on his chest. If there was one thing she appreciated in the moment, it was the amount of body heat he always seemed to radiate regardless of the weather. Not too warm, not too cool, just right-Goldilocks and the Three Bears sure would have been a much weirder-(and less child-friendly)- story if he was a character in it, that was for sure. The couch wasn't really big enough for the both of them but he laid her down anyways, squeezing in next to her. He had taken off his shoes and leather jacket, so in addition to his body heat, she also felt the soft, thin material of his shirt against her skin, or as much of it as was exposed from her dress, with its simple sleeveless, knee-length cut, devoid of any patterns or embellishments on the light blue fabric. It was a bit too tight in the chest, but, then, many dresses were for her. No point in being picky in the apocalypse, after all, she reminded herself, even if the way Joseph's eyes strayed towards her breasts made her cheeks flush. 

"Well, whatever it was, it couldn't have been that important." he decided, sounding much too confident in his own judgment of his short-term memory. Keiko inhaled sharply when she felt his hand rest on her thigh under her dress but didn't bother to move. "Besides, I can think of some things I'd rather be doing right now anyways..." 

"Things? As in more than one?" Keiko could only guess at what made his imagination work the way it did, finding herself wishing she knew what time it was. The later it was, the more convincing her excuse about feeling tired would be. There was no good reason to risk being overheard by the other survivors, as everyone slept on the same floor, and killing someone, convicted child molester or not, certainly didn't put her in the mood to fool around. 

"Why not?" Joseph's hands felt as warm as ever, giving her a little static shock when he reached over to play with her hair. No doubt he wanted to do much more than that-Keiko wasn't born yesterday, and even someone who was could probably figure that out if they were given a few seconds. "There's not much else to do and this place seems alright for the time being. Might as well enjoy it when we have time to relax." 

Relaxing was hardly something she felt capable of after killing someone in cold blood but if she stayed there by herself, no doubt she would just spend her time curled up under the blanket wishing she could shed tears that refused to come. The only person she knew in the entire world was a man she had almost nothing in common with-by all accounts, it was a hell of a coincidence that they even spoke the same language given their vastly different lives, and even then sometimes Keiko wondered if he understood half of what she said to him. He was nothing if not clever and quick-thinking, but there was so much she could never tell him because he simply lacked the experience to comprehend its significance and she could tell the same was probably true on his end as well. 

Somehow, even if he was a bit too familiar in some ways and oddly distant in others, it felt almost like fate that they had found each other, all thanks to someone who was no longer there, and since then, Keiko knew that they would both change each other in some way or another. Such a thing felt as inevitable as the sun rising every morning and setting every night. But-

What am I doing-Keiko suddenly snapped back to reality when she felt his hand stray from her hair, stroking the side of her face. The light in the room seemed even brighter than before and it was starting to really get on her nerves. 

"And what exactly is it that you want to enjoy?" 

The look on Joseph's face told her exactly what she expected-"What do you think?" 

Whatever the look on his face made her feel, the feeling was only magnified when he pressed the pad of his thumb on her bottom lip, stroking it until she felt it start tingling.

Looking out the small crack in the blinds in the small window on the side of the room opposite of the door, Keiko could tell the sun was just beginning to set. Whatever tomorrow would bring was probably not worth thinking about, so what was the harm in ignoring it for a while? Ignorance is bliss-it was an old saying Keiko never really liked, but she supposed even a saying as trite and banal as that held a grain of truth sometimes, she thought after Joseph moved his thumb away to close the gap between them by pressing his lips against hers and snaking a hand behind her back to cradle her close to him.


	12. The Old Spice Incident

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a flashback chapter about one of the many, many ridiculously fucked up episodes of Joseph's life.

At 14 years old, Joseph stood about a foot taller than the average man and could lift one up and throw him several yards without much trouble, but exactly none of that helped him with trying to figure out what the hell he was supposed to do with the 10-page pamphlet (in 10-point comic sans font,) about something called "health insurance" that the lady behind the receptionist's desk with curly blonde hair and a sweater that fit very snugly around her round, perky breasts handed him when he walked into the doctor's office and asked to speak to somebody about "health insurance."

After arriving in this strange place referred to from the locals as "The New Republic of America" some time ago and being told to stay inside some strange gray building with bright lights and strange machines all over the place, Joseph was given money, which he had been informed was necessary to have if he wanted to purchase anything, for fighting (and sometimes killing, if that was what he was told to do,) men in some hidden place or another by his employer. Money turned out to be very useful for a lot of things, but upon discovering that a girl he had met a while ago was in the hospital and needed "health insurance" in order to pay for her stay in the hospital, he took it upon himself to figure out how to obtain it. 

Squinting at the paper, he understood that there were words on the page and he knew what some of them meant, but most of what was in the pamphlet meant absolutely nothing to him. Eyebrows furrowed in aggravation, he decided to ask the lady at the desk for a better explanation. 

"Hi. Can I ask you something?" 

The lady's blonde curls bounced a little when she turned to face him, Joseph yanking his eyes away from her very tight sweater to make eye contact. "What is it?" 

"What does this mean?" 

The poor woman sitting behind the desk blinked in a combination of confusion and exasperation. The man standing in front of her seemed to be, for all intents and purposes, functionally illiterate-everything in the pamphlet was the most basic information about getting approved for government-subsidized health insurance, which was most people who couldn't hold down a full time job and didn't live inside Zone 1 needed, although only about a fraction of a percent of them actually qualified for it under the law. Still, judging by the oddly disheveled appearance of the hulking man in front of her, she was sure there was no way he was qualified to be hired for a full-time job anywhere, given how strict the requirements were for getting a job that was 40 hours a week and provided health insurance. 

"Which part are you having trouble understanding?" 

The un-moving gaze the man in front of her gave, with his constricted pupils and obvious expression of confusion, unnerved her but it certainly wasn't the first time she had to deal with people who weren't all the way there, so to speak, and it certainly wouldn't be the last. 

"The long chunks of words in the middle." 

In a moment of deep antipathy, she realized he was referring to all the text under the title and the large diagram at the end. Why, she asked herself, did she end up in this shitty job dealing with the absolute bottom of the barrel of society, the crackheads, tweakers, hobos, mental patients, teen parents, seasonal employees, and numerous others who earned even less money than she did and lived in even shittier houses and neighborhoods filled with drugs, poverty, industrial landfills, roach hybrid hives, and God knows what other garbage? 

_____

Walking down the street, disappointed after discovering that in order to pay for the "health insurance" the girl he met would need, Joseph would need to make at least 550,000 dollars in order to afford it. There was no way he would make that kind of money before the hospital would kick her out in a week, even if his employer had him fight 10 guys a night for a week straight. A strange light nearby caught his attention, dragging his attention from his depressing thoughts to the equally strange vehicle that had just stopped in front of him. 

Five hours later, one affordable and healthy dinner later, and a brief conversation in an old office in a building that used to be an old-style shopping mall, Joseph discovered he would be paid 750,000 dollars to be in something called a "commercial." 

"And that's it? There's no catch or anything?" Joseph asked the guy with a bushy beard and a slightly too loose necktie sitting behind the desk in a swivel chair. 

"Yeah, just follow the instructions outlined in the sheet we gave you and that's basically it, the money will be deposited into your bank account in one to three business days after filming." 

Three and a half hours later, the entire office building was on fire, a large, angry Siberian tiger lunging after a short, freckled reporter with braces and a heart-shaped face accidentally tripped over a traffic cone, Joseph leaping on the tiger's back and wrestling it to the ground, capturing it in a headlock after 30 seconds or so of struggling. 

"Jesus on a bike, Jim, what the fuck happened?" 

"I don't know, I'm just the sound guy, I didn't do anything, I swear!" 

Jim's answer wasn't good enough for Bob, the main cameraman, who threw his megaphone at Jim in a fit of rage, the reporter screaming in terror while Joseph wrestled the tiger to the ground, choking it while yelling at the top of his lungs. At least they finished the commercial before the building ended up on fire, Joseph reminded himself, so at least he would still get paid. If only that tiger didn't have to go and bother that cute reporter, though. 

"Damn you, we could have been friends, but you had to go and attack that lady, you rude-ass motherfucker!" 

Jim, the downtrodden and terror-stricken sound guy, shrieked when he saw Joseph punch the tiger, knocking it out with a very painful-looking hit to its eye-oh God, that's an eye-socket-Jim fled, hopping into a nearby trashcan and pleading every deity in existence to spare his life while Bob was grabbing his hair, cursing and stomping his feet on the ground while the reporter fled from the tiger and dozens of other people were running around screaming and yelling and doing their best to flee the scene of the disaster. 

Joseph, disappointed about what he had to do to the tiger, wandered off to look for the reporter, finding no cute tiny reporter but stumbling by a blown-out house that turned out to be a crack-house. The smell was pretty foul, but Joseph saw one of the guys in there had some weed and thought about making a trade with him. 

"Hey, who the fuck are you?" One of the guys (not the guy with weed,) a bearded homeless man with two teeth and bloodshot eyes yelled at Joseph, trying to scoop up some white substance off an end table with a rusty spoon. 

"You got any crystal?!" Another guy, a stick-thin man with unfocused green eyes and a tattered old red and black striped beanie hat, hollered at him, rolling off an air mattress and onto the filthy floor, knocking an empty gallon plastic jug over. 

"If I did, I wouldn't be here, dude." Joseph replied, glancing around the place, his nose wrinkled in disgust at the God-awful stench. "You all live in this dump?' 

"No!" the first guy answered half-yelling and half-crying, sniffing deeply before taking a swig of watered-down iced tea out of a plastic cup, a few tears welling his eyes. 

Joseph was about to turn around and leave when the sounds of sirens in the distance freaked out one of the dudes curled up in the corner, a guy with a half-shaved head of wavy faded highlighter-yellow hair, who had been picking his nose before the siren sounds distracted him. "It's the cops!" he screamed, diving out a nearby open window. 

"Oh shit, nigga, it's the cops!" a bald man with a shirt that said "I don't netflix and chill, I VHS and fuck." hollered, dragging the guy lying on the floor up as he made a run for it. 

"Fucking hell, not again! Those bastards!" the first guy yelled, Joseph taking a grand total of 5.32 seconds to decide to get the fuck out there, kicking down the back door and making his way somewhere that wasn't there when a cop car parked out front, a trio of pissed-off cops yelling and brandishing guns. 

Acting sure was a strange job, Joseph thought, making his way back home (which, at the moment, was a single room inside a secure government building,) hoping he would make it back in time before his employer signed him up for another fight. Everything in this place was, he figured, ignoring the sounds of screaming, yelling, firetrucks, and gunshots slowly fading in the background as he walked off. Guess you learn something new everyday, or something like that-at the end of the day, that was all you could do, so he decided to do just that. Try to get through each day as best as possible and let the rest take care of itself.


	13. idk what number I'm technically on anymore and I don't care

What a lovely day it was. The sun was shining, there was a cool, gentle breeze in the air, and the temperature was a balmy, refreshing 75 degrees farenheit with roughly 50% humidity, with a low pollen count (although to be fair, they were out in the middle of a giant lake.) Too bad it didn't do anything to stop the tears flowing down Keiko's face, Keiko only taking a break from blowing her nose 30 times in 15 minutes to eat a slice of pizza Joseph was feeding her with one hand while he held her close to his broad, smooth, hairless chest with his other hand. 

"Sorry, I don't know why I'm crying so much." Keiko apologized between bites of pizza (in about 20 more minutes, it would turn out to be the most food she had eaten in a single meal in about 5 months.) "I mean, besides everything that's happened in the last-" Keiko paused to blow her nose again. "18 years." 

Being a shy, sensitive person who was both paranoid and the type to cry over things like those sad animal shelter commercials on tv wasn't exactly a sweet deal before the apocalypse but it was considerably worse while being stuck on a re-purposed cruise ship out in the middle of a giant lake sometime after a bunch of people started eating each other and another bunch of people were eaten by something that came out of the pacific ocean and a bunch of politicians took it upon themselves to solve the problem by blasting most of the remaining people to unrecognizable smithereens, as they had calculated that doing so would increase their chances of re-election over the alternative. 

"It's fine, it's healthier to let it out anyways." 

Joseph never seemed to care about much of anything-if he did, he didn't show it, and considering he was also the kind of guy who had no trouble beating a group of other grown men with a baseball bat into a red smush on the ground on account of being told a "your mother" joke, she could only assume if he cared, she would have found out already. She had forgotten what day of the week it was a while ago, at any rate. 

"Well, maybe-" she paused to take another bite of pizza when he held the half-eaten slice near her mouth-"this place won't be so bad." She tried to take another bite but just ended up crying again. 

It was true that after the sort of things she had seen in her post-apocalyptic travels, some Amish people, some farmers, a guy who worked in a Post-It production factory, 50 guys who had been in prison for jaywalking, a zookeeper, a five star chef, 100 homeless people, a few dozen juggalos, a group of revolutionary war re-enactors, and a bunch of other eccentric but harmless people who happened to survive hanging out on a cruise ship heading to a reported safe zone somewhere in Michigan was unlikely to be the worst thing she would encounter. On the other hand, she was still stuck on a cruise ship with about 500 more people than should have reasonably been on the cruise ship based on the number of cabins available in the ship. As a result, there she was, sitting on a pool floaty in the middle of a mid-sized pool on board the ship with Joseph, who was feeding her a slice of pizza with tears and snot dripping down her face, her head slumped over on his chest as the sun shone in the sky as innocently as a giant space orb possibly could. 

"If it is, we can always bail." Joseph was not exactly a man of few words (or few emotions,) but his default reaction to most things was to just do what he felt like and see what happened and this was no different. 

"Let's hope things work out." 

Joseph might have not cared about sleeping in cave or a tree and eating whatever he could hunt or spot wherever the hell he was, but Keiko had been born in an air-conditioned apartment in a city with a low violent crime rate compared to the rest of the country and living in the wild without modern technology had never ended up becoming a talent of hers. Had Joseph been born with the same level of social skills, mental stability, and impulse control as most other people who weren't either in jail or a mental hospital, she would have been quite useless. Life, however, had given Joseph superior genetics at the cost of almost everything else and for better or for worse, Keiko was able to credit her continued survival to it. 

A few minutes after Keiko finally managed to finish her slice of pizza, a group of people near the cooler of drinks that was set up on the other side of the deck began an fairly animated argument about the logic of cartoon animals wearing shirts but no pants, and a bunch of people, being too bored to get up and do anything else, were too wrapped up in listening to notice the shambling corpse that stumbled out of the walk-in freezer on the next floor and had made its way up onto the main deck. 

Screams, shouts, and yelling filled the air in seconds, dozens of people running around in any and all possible different directions as carnage and destruction spread across the ship, the poor, beleaguered captain, a 25 year old ex-manager of a local Quick-E-Mart before the apocalypse who had once helped his uncle sail an aluminum fishing boat when he was 12, accidentally let go of the steering wheel when a zombie stumbled towards him, causing the boat to crash into a mountain of fossilized trash that had materialized in the lake a few centuries ago. 

"Hey, you! The girl in the pink dress!" a man in nothing but leather chaps, a fake cop hat, and leather bondage straps across his bare, oiled, hairy chest yelled in Keiko's direction as she held onto a handle in one of the overhead luggage compartments in one of the cabins (the cruise ship was an experimental model. For what kind of experiment, Keiko had no idea, as she often did about things these days.) 

Keiko, finding herself at a loss for how to react, did what she did best, screech and curl up into a ball. 

"Can I help you?" 

The man, wearing a neutral facial expression that didn't match the tone of his voice, tossed her an old purple sweater. 

"The shade of your dress would compliment your skin tone better with this." 

Keiko caught the sweater on reflex, no less confused than before. "Uh, thanks, I guess. But why-"

The mystery man, unperturbed by her confusion, gave her a knowing look. "I have no idea if we're gonna make it off this ship, but either way, it's important to look your best, especially while killing zombies." He then picked up a golf club lying around, swinging it over his shoulder. "Remember, us winter colors gotta coordinate-high contrast, dark, and cool." 

Without another word, he left, charging out of the cabin just as a bald, mildly overweight zombie was about to chomp down on a guy who knew how to make liver-blastingly alcoholic moonshine. 

Keiko swallowed once before checking the sweater for any obvious signs of damage, then, when she was absolutely sure nobody was looking at her, shrugged and pulled it over her head. Joseph had plopped her in the luggage compartment as soon as the first zombie had started eating people, telling her he would return for her after finding the viking axe he had been using as a weapon for the last 2 weeks that he had to drop off in the weapons holding area when they boarded the ship. "Here goes nothing." 

A deafening explosion rocked the ship, causing Keiko's ears to ring. As soon as she began smelling fire, just as the first tendrils of smoke begun making their way into the cabin, Joseph hacked the door to pieces with the axe, hauling her over his shoulder as effortlessly as if she were as light as towel. 

"Holy fuck, we're sinking! We're sinking!" a large man with a bushy beard yelled, almost crashing into a skinny black man with a toupee in the process. 

"Oh my God, we're gonna die!" a blonde woman nearby screamed when a crack in the ceiling began to spread, little bits and pieces of it beginning to crumble and fall to the floor below. 

More screams, shouts, crashing, thumps, and creaking could be heard in an endless cacophony in the background, hundreds of people scrambling to avoid becoming zombie food and make it off the ship in once piece as everything around Keiko seemed to dissolve into a flat, indistinct blur. The pounding of her heartbeat increasing, her adrenaline pumping, and her body shaking like a leaf, everything became louder and louder until there was a splash of cold, followed by a shock of icy air and then, nothing.

_____ 

When Keiko woke up, she found herself in a small, cozy cabin, lying on a pile of soft furs and pillows, the orange glow of a small fire flickering away in a simple fireplace on the other side of the room as Joseph tended the fire. The slight smoky smell in the air was somewhat comforting, along with the soft, colorful glow and the calming, gentle crackling sounds. Before risking doing anything else, Keiko checked herself for injuries, relieved to find none. How they got in the cabin they were staying in was a mystery, but after memories of what happened on the cruise ship flooded her mind, Keiko found no reason to be anything except grateful that she was above ground and without a craving for brains. 

"Oh-uh-" Keiko found herself wrapped up in Joseph's arms before she could say anything, relieved that he didn't smell like blood or zombie guts. "I suppose there's no point in asking what happened to all those people on the ship." 

"They're probably dead. I didn't stick around to find out for obvious reasons." As there was nothing Joseph could have done, Keiko didn't fault him for his matter-of-fact recall of the situation that had unfolded. "We already know where the safe zone is supposed to be so we can still try heading there in the morning if you want." 

"That seems like as good an idea as any." Keiko had no other ideas herself, so she figured it was at least worth a shot. The sun had set about half an hour ago, or so Joseph had told her after she finished her sentence, and she wasn't exhausted but she was tired enough that if given the choice, she would have curled up under one of the large furs she was lying on and gone to sleep. 

"To be honest, I like this better than staying in a room with 5 other people. Not that they weren't nice enough, but I definitely prefer sharing a room with one person in particular." 

Keiko was a sharp, clever woman but she didn't have to be in order to figure out what direction Joseph wanted to take things in, even if the feeling of something hard poking her thigh wasn't a foolproof indicator. She would be lying if she said it didn't cause a pool of heat to gather in her stomach, even considering how tired she was. Though Keiko wasn't what anyone would call forthcoming about her feelings, she couldn't bring herself to hate him. Joseph was never rude or meant to her and to be honest, he wasn't usually rude or mean to anyone else either, but even so, something lurking beneath the surface of his calm, laid-back temperament always remained in the back of her mind. Older and stronger than her conscious mind, some ancient instinct buried deep insider her told her to be careful. And she was, usually. 

The tiny squeak that passed through her lips was a bit embarrassing when Joseph crawled on top of her, leaving her on her stomach and her head pressed against something soft and cozy. "I know I've told you before, but you're very cute." 

Keiko was never the most bold and assertive person but she clammed up worse than a statue when Joseph planted soft kisses on her neck, his hand hovering dangerously close to the hem of her dress. She should probably say something, but she didn't know what she felt, and if she didn't know what she felt, how could she say anything? But still, she should say something. Probably. 

"I'm not picky but I can't say I've ever met a girl quite as cute as you are." Joseph continued kissing her, but that was all he did, waiting for a reaction. 

"I-uh-" Keiko hated how she stuttered now more than anything, wishing she could just spit out a complete sentence in one go. "Are you-" 

Her body felt all hot and she wished she was wearing something lighter but she was also a little scared and tired and feeling uncomfortable. His lips were soft and she wouldn't mind feeling more kisses on her skin but thinking about sex always made her a little nervous. 

"I was just thinking, since we're alone and it's safe and comfortable in here, might as well enjoy it." Joseph's hand remained where it was, his other hand rubbing her back slowly, eventually sliding up to pet her hair. "What do you think?" 

Keiko barely had it in her to form words, much less a whole sentence, but he was nice and warm and it felt good to have his weight on top of her and even if it was awkward, she had enough experience feeling awkward that she had long since gotten used to it. "I don't mind." 

"Good." Joseph brushed some of her hair away from her face, kissing her cheek from behind, his hand sliding up her dress to reveal her panties. They were nothing special, just some basic pink lace fabric thing she had once ordered online during a Black Friday sale a few years ago before the world decided to explode but Joseph was nothing if not easily impressed by literally anything she said, did, or wore. "Oh, how cute. It matches." Keiko hadn't matched her panties to her dress on purpose, it just happened that way. 

"Ah!" Keiko pursed her lips shut when she felt Joseph dip two fingers inside her, gently rubbing back and forth, curling his fingers in and out. He knew exactly what he was doing, more than she ever did, anyways, and she barely had time to notice how wet she was before he helped her finish just like that. 

Next thing she knew, he slipped her dress over her head, tossing it aside, and undid his pants almost as quickly, lining up his his cock against her pussy. If someone were to show up just then and ask Keiko what she was feeling, no dictionary or thesaurus in the world would help her describe any of it. Her body reacted much better than she anticipated when he sheathed himself inside her, being careful to go slow. 

"Your face is adorable but you don't have to be so quiet, you know." he said, his voice halting a moment as he adjusted to the sensation of her cunt squeezing around him. "There's nobody around to hear." 

There was no point in feeling self-conscious now, but Keiko's feelings didn't care about things like logic and facts. With her hand covering her mouth, she bit back a scream as he started moving, his cock stretching her out so perfectly it felt as unreal as traveling through time. A small whimper was all she made in response, squeezing her eyes shut. 

"Mmm, you feel amazing." he breathed, making no effort to hold back now. "You're such a good girl, you know that?" 

Keiko's face was as red as a tomato and hotter than a sauna and her mind was drifting in some location that had no name, her pussy throbbing and her stomach tight and hot and filled with a delicious heat as he thrust away, his hands firmly gripping her hips. His voice was low and rumbling and she could practically feel it vibrating in her ears, almost as loud as the sound of her heart pounding and her blood rushing through her veins. As good as it felt, Keiko couldn't bring herself to remove her hand from her mouth, still too afraid to make too much noise. 

"Well, I guess there's no convincing you, but those little sounds you make are cute anyways." Joseph, being undeterred by her shyness, pounded away at a rough, intense pace, rocking his hips back and forth as he pulled her more towards him. He liked seeing the way her face scrunched up too but this felt just as good as it did when she was on her back and the view of her ass was no less of a treat. 

The vulgar sound of flesh slapping against flesh as Joseph drilled into her reverberated throughout the room, neither of them commenting on it. Keiko wasn't very talkative in bed-Joseph sometimes preferred it in women, but he wouldn't change a thing about her even if someone paid him to. She was way too cute and way too small and soft and warm under him, her sweet face and perfectly proportioned body was a sight he never got sick of seeing, especially when she was squirming underneath him so prettily. As lovely as the view was, he was getting a bit impatient, and soon decided to completely crawl on top of her, thrusting hard and fast as he held her down, none too gently but careful enough not to hurt her. She was so tiny compared to him and he couldn't bear the thought of breaking her, so he handled her with as much caution as he could muster. Different women required a different approach, and someone as soft and delicate as her was to be handled with only the most careful and sensitive attention.

Time seemed to pass at an undefinable rate as Keiko lied there, the rush of heat inside her unfurling and blossoming like a flower blooming in the height of summer as she felt him deepen his thrusts somehow, hitting all the right spots inside her each time without fail. Falling limp as a rag-doll beneath him, Keiko switched to pressing her forearm against her mouth, whimpering as he slammed into her, grunting in a deep, low voice like thunder rolling in the distance. Intense enough to be scary and pleasing enough to feel relieving, Keiko's legs had gone numb a while ago and now all she felt was the hot, wet feeling of her pussy being stretched out, every inch of his cock brushing against her walls as she lied flat on her stomach, sweat coating her skin and her cheeks burning as steadily as the fire in the background. 

Finally crashing over the edge, Joseph stopped moving his hips for a few moments, a flood of thick white-hot liquid coating the inside of her pussy, some of it dripping out below her, almost a little too much, perhaps, or so she thought when all was said and done and Joseph finally got off her, breathing heavily with a thin layer of sweat on his forehead, though his skin color was a few shades too dark to show a blush on his face. "You did such a good job, sweetheart." Somehow, despite everything that happened, Keiko felt her face heat up even more when Joseph kissed her forehead after she had rolled onto her side, still limp and worn out from the exertion as she stared at nothing in particular in front of her. 

Without much of a fuss, Joseph got up, grabbing something for her to wipe herself off with and curled up next to her under a thick blanket as the fire died down to small embers after she did so, wrapping an arm around her with a satisfied hum. "Shh, just relax now." He told her, feeling a spark of contentment as she nestled close to him. Being too exhausted to speak, Keiko lied still as he held her close, her mind ping-ponging between brief anxiety about what tomorrow would bring and the realization that whatever was coming, she at least had someone she could trust enough to not leave her alone when she had to face it, come what may. 


	14. Chapter 14

It was so bright, Keiko could hardly see anything, but she heard the crowds of people (though had she inspected them closer, she would have realized they weren't all people,) yelling and cheering, their ear-splitting noise giving her a headache. She was already a small person, but she felt even smaller in the arms of the person who was holding her. He had extremely hairy hands, and arms, for that matter, which didn't make sense until she looked up and realized he was a mandrill. He (not that she could really tell the gender, but at that point, did it really matter,) held her quite carefully, as if she were a very special treasure that was meant to be revered, holding her up to show to the cheering crowd below. Keiko could feel her pulse increasing and her face growing hot with the oppressive heat of fear, much like an antelope being stalked by a lion in the African Savannah. There were no lions in the crowd that she could tell (unless that one guy's fur-suit wasn't actually a fur-suit,) but then again, she had a feeling it really didn't matter either way. 

Her hypothesis, as based on minimal information as it was, turned out to be correct, as the mandrill raised its arms as high as possible before throwing her off the cliff it was standing on, the crowd making just as much noise as before until her rapid descent to the ground made an abrupt end when everything went black and she woke up on a second-rate air mattress in a dingy low-income housing apartment complex in a bedroom with tacky 80's themed decor and Joseph's face buried in the crook of her neck and his arms wrapped around her in a vice grip. 

"Thank God it was a dream..." Keiko mumbled, despite knowing that being awake usually held nothing but disappointment for her. She kind of had to pee too (well, either that or her stomach was cramping the way it typically did around a certain time of month-either way, she figured better safe than sorry,) but getting out of Joseph's gorilla glue vice grip was basically impossible for even Olympic level athletes, much less a slightly underweight college student with minimal athletic ability.

"Uh, Joseph?" Keiko was a little disappointed about having to get up because it was nice and warm, even if she never stopped feeling flustered being so close to him, and also because today was the first day in a week their three roommates they had been forced to share the apartment with, a displaced towel coach for a football team who had turned to a particularly pungent strain of weed grown using zombie corpses as compost to extinguish his existential angst and a pair of ambiguous twins who both had bangs covering their eyes and communicated only by chirping like Cousin Itt (the ex-towel manager seemed to understand them well enough, however,) were all gone at the same time. 

"Yeah?" 

Keiko froze a moment when she heard a creak but soon realized it was just the creaky old floor shifting. "I gotta grab something really quick, can you let go?" 

Joseph felt a twinge of disappointment but let her go after squeezing a little harder, Keiko being careful to walk to the bathroom quietly so as not to make the floor creak anymore than it absolutely had to. 

"Huh, it's actually quiet..." Joseph didn't mind being around people, but it was nice to have a moment where nobody else was around but Keiko. 

He blinked once, taking a moment to look around. A thought passed through his head, followed by another, and a few others zipping around like a few dozen cars all going in different (and equally wrong) directions on a crowded 15-lane mega-highway where all the signs were broken. 

"I wonder what color underwear she's wearing-" The mischief occurring in his brain screeched to a rapid halt when he heard something crash. 

After Keiko tried (not as successfully as she would have liked,) to sweep up the glass bottle she accidentally knocked off the top of the toilet after using the bathroom and washing her hands, she slumped to the ugly tiled floor in defeat, not noticing anything besides how crummy she felt until Joseph found her leaning against the wall, her face in her hands. 

"Hey, what's wrong?" 

It wasn't until Joseph had carried Keiko back to the air mattress that Keiko realized what was happening. As she couldn't be sure that anyone else she was sharing the apartment with was a woman, there was nobody she could commiserate with about her current problems. If only she had a hot water bottle and a cup of chamomile tea. Unfortunately, it was the middle of the apocalypse and all she had were some weird roommates and a traveling companion who shared an equal enthusiasm for dishing out supervillain levels of physical violence to a diverse assortment of people and things that were shaped like people and smashing any willing woman in a close enough proximity. He kept her safe, but he definitely wasn't the type of person she wanted to talk about PMS with. 

"I don't think you'd want to hear about it." Keiko replied. For a man who had taken more people out of commission permanently with nothing but his bare hands and a worryingly absent level of impulse control, he never gave her the impression that he wasn't completely and totally interested in every single thing she had to share without judgment or derision. Even if he stopped being able to remember how many women he had fucked before they had even met, it was still oddly flattering (even it it took her months to admit as much to herself.) 

"I've heard a lot, I think I can handle it." Joseph seemed undeterred, which only bothered her more. 

"Well, let's put it this way, I don't think any man would want to hear about it." 

Joseph generally wore all his emotions on his face and this was no different, giving her a knowing look while he curled up next to her again, squeezing one of her hands in his own in a gesture meant to comfort her. "That's all? There's nothing gross about that, it happens, it's just a part of life." He squeezed her hand a little harder, kissing her hair before pushing her on her back, gently stroking her face. The towel manager and the hairy twins were gone-they were decent enough company if he ignored how fucking rank the towel manager smelled when they first met but Joseph was glad they weren't around to interrupt the moment. Joseph's strategy was as simple as a 6 foot 9 man who could wrestle a bear unarmed and lose nothing more than his shirt in the process could afford to have: wait for the right moment and shoot his shot. 

"If you want, I can help distract you." 

Keiko took a deep breath, trying not to blush too hard upon feeling Joseph's hand resting on her thigh, which was mostly exposed thanks to the short pajama shorts she had worn to bed. She could go through the process of weighing the pros and cons and analyzing her emotional state until she reached a clear conclusion, but she didn't have anywhere near the mental energy to go through all that this early in the morning. Oh, what the hell? The roommates were gone, after all. 

_____

A few minutes into some quick, gentle kisses turned into rough kissing with tongue, Keiko felt Joseph's hand slide up her thigh, his fingers dipping between her legs until both of them stumbled upon a rather obvious understanding. Eyes locked onto each other for one of the most awkward and terrifying moments in Keiko's life, after the initial realization had sunk in for both of them, Joseph calmly climbed off her, as surprised as if someone had shown him some grass growing. 

"Oh God, why-I'm cursed, I have to be, I mean, there's no other reasonable logical explanation-I'm gonna die-" Keiko was sure the embarrassment would kill her, fighting back tears as she headed to the bathroom again, this time to take a shower and hope the memories (and the blood) would wash away as soon as humanly possible while Joseph, remaining unfazed, headed to the front door of the apartment to answer it when someone knocked a few moments after she had decided to take a shower. In a characteristic lapse of short-term memory, as sometimes happened 12 to 24 hours after he had indulged in something highly illegal with the twins, as he had done sometime last night, he had yet to remember to wash his hands before answering the door.

He did, however, remember to pick up a metal baseball bat he had been using lately before opening the door, wearing nothing but underwear that revealed quite an impressive dick print (it also had a design of little cats sitting on top of donuts on it,) eyeing the small blonde woman wearing a nun's habit who had knocked on the door with interest. 

"Huh, can't say I've seen you around before. What can I do for you?" Joseph asked, his voice neutral and his thought process something along the following lines once he got a good look at her: There are actually boobs under there. 

Joseph was more of an ass man (and thighs, of course,) but every aspect of the female form was like a different part of a great feast and he wasn't a very picky eater. 

_______

Inside an old, abandoned church, a beleaguered, disheveled looking priest in name only flipped through the pages of an old, well-worn Bible, shaking his head in disappointment.

"Why the fuck is there nothing about those fucking low-bred underclass parasitic monkeys in here?" He threw the book at the wall, balling his fist in rage as he ignored the bloodcurdling scream echoing from just a short distance away. "Thou shalt not kill-what a joke that is!" 

Pushing his glasses up his face with a single finger, he stood up, walking over to heave the Bible he had thrown on the ground out the nearest window. "Once I rid the land of that filth, His Holiness will bring prosperity to the land and order to dissolve the chaos once and for all." His blood pressure leveling out after tossing the book out a window, he sighed, rubbing his temples as the screaming grew louder, finally capturing his attention. What now?


	15. Chapter 15

The rain pattering on the roof of the abandoned hotel Keiko was stuck in wasn't all that loud, as it wasn't raining especially hard, but Keiko found the noise hard to ignore; burying her face in her pillow. Going from being a busy college student who studied far more than was necessary for someone with her intellectual abilities and had just started an internship on the side to spend as much time away from home as possible to wandering the Earth (or at least around the North American continent) trying to survive and find some remnants of human civilization again with only the help of someone who was as mentally unstable as he was fond of her, Keiko rarely had the opportunity to just rest without being bothered by anyone or anything. 

Normally, as she had been doing up until a few minutes ago when she realized how late it was getting (for her at least, given her preference for sticking to a strict sleeping schedule as much as possible,) Keiko spent all her time that wasn't spent actively trying not to be killed by someone or something writing down what she remembered and studying the notes she made in an attempt to keep her mind sharp. Unlike Joseph, or in fact the vast majority of people who were still alive, Keiko had no physical advantage over those who had already died and tried as she might, she didn't have the physical stamina or talent to pick up any techniques related either to fighting or to any more than the most basic form of self defense (which was nothing more than running and hiding somewhere until Joseph took care of whatever was trying to kill her in the first place.) Having closed her tattered old notebook, shoving it in her tattered old backpack, Keiko had a warm cup of tea (a little smaller than she would have liked, plus with nothing to sweeten it, but it was the apocalypse after all,) cleaned up, put on her pajamas, and went to lie on her bed, hoping sleep would find her. 

Insomnia was nothing new for her, and though Joseph was always willing to help her out, Keiko had never found herself in the mood to accept it nearly as much as he offered, which was as surprising as the sun rising every morning and the phases of the moon going through the same cycle month after month. Getting all hot and sweaty was a real pain in the ass when you were 5 feet tall and 100 lbs. soaking wet with nothing to show in the way of physical strength or talent (the most impressive physical feats Keiko had accomplished before the apocalypse was taking a 30 minute walk every day and doing some simple yoga stretches for a few minutes every morning and every night,) never-mind her shitty self-esteem and her crippling anxiety that made it difficult for her to talk to people let alone engage in other activities with them. As the rain pattered on, her thoughts wandered over to their usual hangout-the significant section of her brain devoted to worrying-worrying about what had already gone wrong in the past, what was going wrong in the present, what could be going wrong in the present, and what could go wrong in the future. Being trapped in the middle of the apocalypse and knowing that her mother, the only relative she had seen since she was a small child, was probably dead and even if she wasn't, Keiko knew better than to put it past her mother from trying to kill her herself (or at least allow her to get in some kind of fatal accident and pretend not to notice.) 

Either way, having no way of knowing if her mother was still alive and also having no way of deciding whether or not she really wanted to find out, Keiko knew there were more logical things she could be spending her time on than thinking about the woman who gave birth to her, so she decided to get up and walk around a bit to see if that would help her sleep, or at least she thought of doing as much until she felt a familiar weight climb on top of her, brushing some of her hair aside to kiss her face. 

"Hey, why the long face?" 

Keiko was too gentle to even hurt a fly, much less admit to having a negative thought about anyone who hadn't actively tried to hurt her or someone she cared about, but there was no denying, even from Joseph himself, that Keiko held an advantage over him in intelligence. He was by no means stupid, but quite a lot of things that she easily recognized failed to leave an impression on him and subtle cues she picked up on flew right over his head more often than not. 

On the other hand, when you were strong enough to kill ten men with a single swing of a dining room table and skilled enough to wrestle a 20 foot long crocodile and tie it up so it could be safely returned to its natural habitat, it was only natural that you would lack the instinct to recognize every single little sign of anxiety someone else showed. It only made sense, after all, she told herself, so she couldn't in good conscience bring herself to blame him. The sort of life they led in the apocalypse was in many ways not much different from the way he had lived before arriving in The New Republic of America and in that sense, she saw little reason for him to feel as uncomfortable and on edge as she did. He had grown up somewhere in a barely hospitable climate, with no electricity, running water, or government, meeting more people in the first 24 hours he had spent after finding modern civilization than he had in all his life before then. Most of her worries were things he would never be able to understand no matter how she tried to explain it to him, through no fault of anyone. 

"Just a little tired, that's all." 

Joseph gave her a curious look, not that she bothered to turn to see it. "You want company?" 

Not really, Keiko thought, only giving her more anxiety about how to let him down gently (he didn't care, not that she would ever find out because she never let anyone down any way but gently.) "Well, it's not really that late, I don't want to keep you from doing something if you want." Unlike Keiko, Joseph found it massively entertaining to tell the other occupants of the abandoned hotel (mostly a combination of grizzled war veterans, ex-fighters, members of various anarchist anti-government factions, private military contractors, professional sports players, and other less than typical types of people,) wild stories about all the mentally scarring shit that had happened to them (as most of it was only mentally scarring to her,) and fight each other for fun (Joseph always held back a little to make it extra fun even if that involved him suffering minor unnecessary injuries,) and Keiko realized that as fond as he was of her, she could never be the type of person who could give him the kind of social interaction he seemed to enjoy most. That, and Keiko had a very strict personal policy of not consuming any substances harder than caffeine, whereas Joseph held himself to no such restrictions, and when the strobe lights were on and the music was blasting on the ancient boom box from the bygone year of 1987, there was no telling what would happen. 

"Spending time with you is always fun to me." She allowed herself to blink once after Joseph left a few more kisses down her neck, stopping right where her shirt began. 

"It's just that we finally met other people after so long and I thought maybe you'd want to hang out with someone besides me for a change of pace. After our last little journey, I could use some extra sleep anyways." 

Joseph was the exact opposite of a mind-reader, but having studied Keiko's behavior and mannerisms as long as they had been together out of nothing but sheer insanity-inducing levels of interest in her like a dog fixated on the same bone for months on end, he had gained just enough knowledge to figure out when he wasn't wanted at least most of the time. "You sure?" 

"Positive." Keiko told him, trying not to internally combust with embarrassment as he squeezed her a little harder, holding her against him with an odd combination of gentleness and reservation, as if he were holding out hope that she might change her mind. 

"Well, if you say so." He let got a little, his eyes still locked on her as she shifted her position to look up at him. "I'll be back later." 

Keiko rolled over, focusing once again on the sound of the rain as Joseph strode off with enthusiasm, eager to find out what other mischief he could get up to with the rest of the survivors that he found the most entertaining of the bunch. Their hotel room was set up in such a way that their beds were in separate rooms with the bathroom being in between them, which was a hell of a lot more convenient and spacious than a lot of the places they had stayed in so far. The rain was steady but not especially intense, a combination that soon led to Keiko's thoughts drifting this way and that, her insomnia fading as the bed began to feel more comfortable and she discovered the blanket felt much warmer and cozier than it had before. 

______

The moon was high in the sky when Keiko woke up to use the bathroom, resolving to tiptoe out of bed as quietly and carefully as possible to avoid disturbing the relaxing peace and quiet she had awoken to-or at least thought she had until after quickly taking care of business and washing her hands, she heard a soft rustling sound, like someone rolling over in bed, followed by heavy breathing. As the sound repeated itself, interrupted by a low grunt and some muttered phrase in a language she didn't speak or understand, Keiko realized what was happening and, as luck would have it, also realized she was too terrified to move. Nobody was being hurt or killed and in fact there was nobody else at all in the other room except for Joseph, whose voice was as recognizable as the sight of clouds in the sky or leaves on a tree, and she knew exactly what was going on, but that did nothing to calm her nerves-if anything, it just made it worse. Awkward didn't even begin to describe it, and despite having seen quite a lot of him in quite a lot of ways, Keiko couldn't help but feel a sense of shame creeping up her spine, her face flushing as the heavy breathing continued, combined with a few low, rumbling grunts and groans. 

An old colleague of hers from her internship liked to share silly memes with everyone in their department all the time. One that stuck out to her seemed almost too tailor-made for her particular situation: a shitty low-resolution image of Shaggy from Scooby Doo with the phrase "We're in for it now Scoob" typed in Comic Sans Font that he shared with everyone when they all had their first assignment landed on them without warning. 

Of all the things to think about right now-then again, Keiko told herself-what could possibly be more fitting. It wasn't like she had any sensible choices to make. Going back to bed would risk her making too much noise and disturbing him but staying there would risk her being caught. Joseph wouldn't get mad-far from it, in fact, and that was the scary part. Inhibition seemed to be a foreign concept to him where sex was concerned-whatever he wanted to do, he did it (or asked if she was down for it,) without consideration for what was considered normal or not. Chances are, if she was adventurous (or, that is, brave enough) to do so, he would do anything she asked of him. What a scary thought-in general, anything that drew her attention to warmth gathering on her face or pooling in her stomach scared the living daylights out of Keiko, but this-the incredibly, extraordinarily fucked up situation she was trapped in now, was by far one of the worst offenders. Her ear pressed to the door, to try to figure out whether or not he would hear anything if she tried to sneak back to her room, her heart was pounding like a set of drums and beating as loud as wind during a hurricane and her stomach was in knots and her pajamas felt too warm and her skin was aching, her whole body tensing in response to the flood of hormones rushing through her, igniting a craving for something so terrible and dangerous and wonderful she felt ashamed to even give it a name even though she knew damn well what it was. 

Hearing a brief groan, slightly more punctuated than the rest, brought her hand to her mouth, pressed over her lips to keep a gasp of surprise from escaping. Shame was not a word in his vocabulary in any aspect of life, and certainly not sex, and she knew the only reason he was trying to be quiet was to not bother anyone else in the hotel, the thought only making that burning ache inside her core all that more frustrating and intense. Crouching close to the floor with her feet supporting her weight, she put all her energy into breathing as quietly as possible, trying her best not to make a sound as-

"Fuck, I'm-"

Keiko's eyes threatened to bulge right out of her head and her mouth went dry, but she remained still, refusing to lose this battle no matter what she heard coming from the other room, and there were some decidedly telling sounds coming from there. No way would she ever live it down if he found her, she thought. That's it, you got this, as soon as this is done, you can go back to bed and be free-

Keiko felt her stomach drop when he muttered her name under his breath, her body thinking she was on the world's tallest rollercoaster as she felt her stomach sink at such a speed it felt unreal, her face blazing hot like a massive inferno. But it's over now, at least, she reminded herself when no more words left his mouth, her heart rattling around inside her ribcage like the Kool-Aid man trying to crash through a wall. 

"Ah, damn, I left my shirt in the bathroom." Joseph mumbled to himself a few minutes later, dragging himself out of bed to grab it so he could throw it on top of the dresser so he'd be able to find it the next morning, pausing when he opened the bathroom door and found Keiko with her knees curled to her chest and her hand over her mouth. 

"Oh, what's this?" 

Keiko felt her stomach sink all the way to the center of the Earth when he noticed the look on her face, arching a brow in amusement. "If you want, you could have just asked to watch- you know I don't mind that sort of thing if that's what you like." 

It took all of her willpower and then some to get up on her shaky legs, but Keiko grit her teeth and tried not to scream anyways. "I-I-" Come on, breathe-breathe, you gotta breathe-Keiko swallowed hard, almost enough to hurt. "I didn't know you came back." she decided to take the path of least resistance and change the subject. 

"I got back about an hour ago." Joseph didn't prod her anymore, at least not about that. "It's late, but we don't have any plans for tomorrow, might as well enjoy it." 

"It is pretty late." she agreed on the first part, not sure what she was hoping for (besides to go back to sleep, that is.) 

Joseph pet her hair-he always liked the texture of her hair, her soft curls were nothing like his own long, pin-straight hair and it only fascinated him more. "Well, if you can't sleep, I just thought I'd offer to help." 

"I just woke up a few minutes ago..." Keiko knew damn well where this conversation was going, and she also knew she was still tired (though not as much as before,) but otherwise felt completely adrift in a sea of emotions that felt as incomprehensible as trying to teach monkeys how to type Shakespeare. Her hormones and her urge to sleep were at odds with each other and the two conflicting physical states inside her were gnawing away at her like a dog having a go at a bone. "Not because of you though." she quickly added. 

Keiko never had a good grip on what exactly was going through Joseph's mind aside from the obvious but she didn't flinch when he pinned her against the wall, stroking the side of her face. "Hey, there's nothing to feel bad about." He was so close to her, she didn't bother moving-it wouldn't have helped anyways, and as odd and difficult to deal with as he was, it still felt flattering in a way. "How about we head over to my room and take it from there? If you don't want to do anything, we don't have to." 

What's the harm-Keiko soon found herself lying on top of Joseph, making far more eye contact with him than she felt comfortable doing with anyone (or anything, for that matter-she was such a ball of worry and anxiety that even making eye contact with animals, let alone people, was stressful for her,) ignoring the sound of her heart slamming against her chest as Joseph rubbed her back. 

"I'm sorry about startling you earlier." Keiko apologized again for being in the bathroom when he didn't expect her to be there. 

"I told you, I don't mind-" 

"I mean, you could have tripped over me though." she quickly added, squeaking in embarrassment as Joseph rested one of his hands on her ass, gripping her closer than before. 

"Oh, don't be silly, it would take a lot more than that to hurt me." he pet her hair again, pulling her close to him. "I know I've said this before, but don't think I'm repeating myself." he told her before kissing her. "You're really cute, and no matter how many people I meet, you're still one of the cutest." 

"I-" Keiko was a complete failure at responding to compliments, especially when she was pressed against the chest of a man who was more than twice her size and terribly handsome. "Sorry, I ruin everything by being shy." she admitted, wishing she could bury her face in her hands when Joseph slid a hand up her shirt, rubbing her back while he held her down with the other hand.

"Nonsense, what could possibly be ruined by you?" 

Keiko's face was way too warm to deal this, she thought, afraid she would spontaneously explode into pieces when Joseph went in for another kiss, their lips brushing against each other just as the sound of a bomb going off on the other end of the hotel reverberated throughout the building without so much as a split second of warning, their lips separating when they heard someone yell "Fire!" at the top of their lungs.


	16. Chapter 16

Since grocery stores were naturally not very well-stocked in the middle of the apocalypse, Keiko was careful to make sure whatever supply of non-perishable food they had on hand was well-organized (and, if they were lucky enough to find somewhere to stay for more than a single night, on a shelf she could easily reach.) 

"Phew, that should do it." Keiko said after organizing every single can of food they had managed to find in the last week and a half or so (Joseph being able to hunt helped them make their food supply last longer,) on a shelf in what used to be someone's pantry by size, color, type of food, and nutritional content of every single type of vitamins and minerals. 

If she had access to a qualified therapist, they likely would have informed her that she had OCD, but even before various undead creatures had begun wreaking havoc on human civilization (and not for the first time in recorded human history either,) getting decent mental health treatment was difficult, expensive, and very rarely covered by insurance, so Keiko would likely never discover the answer. Besides, being diagnosed with several different types of severe anxiety was already plenty to emotionally process, apocalypse or no apocalypse. Of course, the elephant in the room (not literally, as he was off doing God knows what,) was that her traveling companion, who she had now known longer than many of her own family members, classmates, and former friends, had struggled to function far more than she ever had in the world before the apocalypse-it didn't take longer than all of 15 minutes within first meeting him for her to realize that as much as she struggled, he was far beyond any help modern medicine or psychology could offer anyone. Keiko, for all her difficulty swallowing the black cloud of fear and terror that hung over her day in and day out for as long as she could remember, didn't go from chatting with a group of people to turning them into a bloody smear of splintered bones and mangled internal organs on the ground in seconds and then walk off in a dazed stupor showing no sign of remembering what had just happened. 

Had Keiko met him under any other circumstances, she would have been scared of him and rightfully so, but meeting him after living with the woman who had given birth to her and growing into a young woman inside a country ruled by a soulless sociopath who seemed to thrive off of making other people suffer in every way possible, someone like Joseph didn't faze her as much as he perhaps should have, for better or for worse. At any rate, there was at least some kind of logic towards what sort of people got on his bad side and when he got along with people, he demonstrated a willingness to do things to help them, a rare trait Keiko never had much experience seeing in other people growing up. Her classmates and colleagues at her university belonged to that group of rare exceptions, but Keiko was the only one of them who had survived the initial disaster and she only had so many tears she could afford to waste on them before she would risk dying of dehydration. 

She had just turned the corner to the living room/bedroom (the actual bedroom had been blown out a while back, leaving only three usable rooms in the house-the living room, kitchen, and bathroom,) when she saw Joseph flipping through her notebook. Being a scientist (or at least studying to become something of the sort before the apocalypse threw a monkey wrench into her plans,) Keiko wanted nothing more than to preserve as much of the knowledge she had gained over all the years she spent studying in the hope that it would be of use to future generations of people and also so she wouldn't forget anything important. 

"Oh, hey, you've been gone a while." As far as Keiko was concerned, Joseph was worse than her old dog when she was gone for any length of time (although thankfully Joseph didn't jump on her and lick her face, as that would have been much creepier coming from him than her dog.) Though he was almost certainly older than her, Joseph was as clingy as Saran Wrap sticking to something it wasn't supposed to stick to and when she had more knowledge than he did in certain circumstances, he seemed content to follow her around with just as much enthusiasm as her old pet and do whatever she told him to do with or without the promise of a reward later. 

"I was just organizing our stuff is all." Keiko replied, a confused look on her face when she saw how many pages he was into her notebook. "You can understand all that?" 

"No. I didn't learn how to read until I had time to get some lessons a couple years ago. I never got good at it, but I just wanted to see what you spent so much time writing about." 

Joseph could read enough to get by and very little more and could write just about as well, so naturally, he had never developed a hobby of doing either of those things, but more than a few nights, he had caught Keiko writing in her large notebook and organizing different papers and though he knew absolutely nothing about what she was doing or why, it caught his interest enough for him to want to see what she was doing for himself. 

"Well, I don't think you'd find it very interesting. It's mostly just stuff I've been studying that I don't want to forget." 

Joseph quirked a brow at her, shifting his weight in the chair he was sitting in to get more comfortable. "I'll be honest, I don't understand a lot of it, but the stuff I do understand seems pretty interesting to me." 

Keiko felt her face flush with a twinge of heat-she had few hobbies growing up, rarely developing the confidence to allow herself to explore things that sparked her interest, but one outlet she allowed herself was science. Biology was her favorite subset of the subject, though all of it interested her to some extent-animals, especially sea animals, were another thing she was passionate about and over time, her two interests combined, leading her to choose marine biology as her major. For most of her life, Keiko had resigned herself to the fact that anyone outside of her field of study would probably just think she was an odd, tiresome loner-an awkward geek who buried her face in books and research and had nothing exciting or engaging to offer anyone. Nobody really had anything to say about it before besides her mother, but considering what her mother had to say about her, they didn't need to say anything-Keiko had long since steeled herself to prepare for the fact that nobody would ever want anything to do with some stiff, geeky loser like her who spent more time with books and animals than other people. Somebody not judging her was quite an unexpected shock to her system, one she didn't know what to do with. 

"It is?" 

Keiko had gathered enough courage to walk over just close enough to see how far he had gotten through her notebook-he had skimmed most of the pages he had flipped past but he didn't tell her that- noting that his smile seemed genuine and showed in his eyes and not just his lips. 

"The world's a pretty big place." he said. "And there's all sorts of people in it, a lot more than I ever even knew about at first, and if the people are interesting, than the rest of it has to be even more fascinating." 

Keiko hardly noticed when he pulled her onto his lap until she already found herself sitting there, glancing at a page she had written some weeks ago, something about the natural habitat of a certain species of seals. Her heart thudded against her chest a little too loud for comfort, but there was something relaxing about watching Joseph flip to the next page and she found herself all too happy to explain what she had written when he asked her to try to simplify it for him. 

"Well, I'll give it my best shot but I can't guarantee it'll make sense." The following page went more into depth about something involving weather patterns and the way sea ice stayed frozen for multiple years at a time, but she decided to give it her best shot. 

Concentrating while Joseph was holding her so close was difficult, her face heated and her heart skipping a beat or two along the way, but Keiko did her best, beaming with an unfamiliar sense of happiness inside that someone not only tolerated listening to her ramble on about what she had been studying in university but enjoyed it as well. 

While the sun began its descent under the horizon, Keiko had since picked up her notebook, holding it with two hands while Joseph held her tight, one hand resting on her thigh and appreciating the way her smooth skin felt under his rough hand just as much as he enjoyed listening to her talk about something that didn't make her voice strain with worry or bring tears to her eyes. The soft, delicate sound of her voice was pleasant to listen to, calming him as much as sitting there with her did. Part of him didn't want to ruin the moment, but the idea of sliding his hand a little farther up her thigh to slip under her panties (assuming that was what was under her skirt, of course) bounced around his head like a pinball in a pinball machine. He didn't want to interrupt her, of course, as the sound of her voice was all too pleasant, but his impulses paid no mind to any of that, as was typical for him. 

"It's getting pretty late." Joseph commented when Keiko paused at the end of a page to glance out the window, noticing the array of pink and orange hues painting the evening sky. He didn't care that much, but he assumed she did-she was very careful about things like that. 

"Yes, we should probably double check the door to make sure we remembered to lock it." Keiko made a move to get up when Joseph pulled her against him again, humming in a low voice when he smelled her hair. 

Coming from anyone else, Keiko probably would have frozen in disgust or fear, but over time she had gotten used to him and his endless list of impulsive behaviors, finding it not so disagreeable after realizing how she felt about him. He was no romantic, but he had a certain charm to him, and as time passed, his positive qualities grew on her and the negative ones proved more and more with each passing day to be of little danger to her. 

"Not just yet." Keiko stayed still, resting her head on his chest while he caressed her thigh. "Let's stay like this a bit longer." 

What's the harm, Keiko thought, enjoying how warm his chest felt and how secure she felt in his strong arms. A few moments wouldn't hurt anyone. Especially with a nice sunset like this one, she reasoned, gazing out the window to enjoy the sight of the sky before she knew they'd have to board up the window and double check the locks on the front door. A few moments like this in a world as shitty as this one were too good to throw away, after all. There was enough trash in the world already, and more would surely make itself known in the future, so for now, for these precious few moments, the best course of action was to enjoy the beauty she found with the company she had.


	17. Chapter 17

Keiko carefully hid her most important notebook away, placing it under an old desk and covering it with a pile of slightly-dirty pants and shirts-it was strange, but it helped her find it right away when she needed it. On days where travel was impossible, Keiko spent most of her time writing down everything she remembered-all the information she had learned in school, every single piece of knowledge could come in handy later, and she didn't want to forget any of it. All of it was part of what she had been working for all her life-more than just a way to find a job, it was also a way to earn her independence, live a life free from the toxic presence of her mother that hung over her like the dark clouds in the sky. 

It was late, and Keiko had made dinner for her and the only person she had seen in the last 5 days not too long ago-calling him a friend was something akin to hyperbole, but if she had money, he would have made an excellent bodyguard, and his more outgoing personality helped pull her out of her shell sometimes. Things could be worse. Things could be always worse. 

The summer thunderstorm that had started a little while ago made the sky rather dark and as they had already eaten a while ago, Keiko figured it was probably a good idea to go to bed. Having only a large mattress stolen out of another abandoned house to sleep on, Keiko tried not to think too hard about whether or not it would be comfortable-there were no sheets, pillows, or blankets and Keiko didn't have much in the way of pajamas so it would be an interesting night to say the least. 

Tiptoeing into the only usable bedroom in the house, Keiko struggled not to make an undignified screeching noise when she saw Joseph lying on the mattress wearing a suit that was so tacky, it was unsettling, smoking something she couldn't have identified if she wanted to. The suit was stolen off some corpse (one that wasn't moving) a while ago but Keiko didn't know that and either way, she resolved to make it a point to never find out. To be fair, it wasn't that the clothes didn't suit him-teal was a good color for him, it just looked rather odd on a pair of suit slacks and a suit jacket, and it was also a snakeskin pattern that had a metallic shine to it and it reminded her far too much of a pimp suit. 

"Imagine the shower in the other room worked right now." Joseph wore a perfectly untroubled expression on his face as he threw the joint he had just finished smoking out the window, making an uncomfortable amount of eye contact with Keiko, who defined an uncomfortable amount as "any" in the current context. "I doubt we'd both actually fit in it, but a guy can dream." 

She wished she could wash her clothes in an actual washing machine, but if she was desperate enough, she realized in a perverse twist of imagination, she could probably wash her clothes with his abs. Ugh. 

What if I just passed out right now-I wonder what would happen. Sadly, Keiko didn't pass out, not even when Joseph pulled her on the mattress with him, holding her next to him without moving a muscle. Back in the 5th grade when Keiko had to speak in front of her class for 10 minutes, she made like a tree being chopped down by a large, burly lumberjack in the middle of the forest about 7 minutes into her class project but unfortunately, her body was nowhere near as cooperative right then, even-especially-when she felt something hard poke her butt.

"The floor's gonna get wet if you keep the window open." Keiko reminded Joseph. 

Joseph stared up at the ceiling for a moment, mulling something over in his head-Keiko didn't dare ask what-before nodding, as if he had just happened upon a stunning realization. Without a word, he shut the window, joining her on the bed and holding her close once again like nothing had happened.

"Well, anyways, if we both fit into the shower in the other room right now and it worked, what would you do?" 

Keiko's first instinct was to bury her face in something, but the only thing available was Joseph's bare chest. Why me, she asked the universe, not sure if she wanted to fall into a sinkhole in the ground or just disappear into thin air. "Uh, take a shower." 

"I mean besides the obvious." 

What the-Keiko shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment wishing that she could will herself to be somewhere else but soon gave up after she realized it gave her a headache. "Well, doing anything else in a shower would be irresponsible-wasting water raises your water bill, after all." 

Joseph probably had no idea what a water bill was, but like so many other awkward moments, Keiko had quite a lot of thoughts swimming around her head but very little to say. 

"Okay, what about a hot tub then?" he asked.

"What about a hot tub?" 

This time last year, Keiko was getting ready to start her first year of college, excited to be able to spend most of the year away away from her mother's constant criticism and complaining and have a chance to learn about all the things that interested her the most. Now, after humanity found itself at the mercy of hordes of the undead swarming the earth for the third time in human history, she was lying on a shitty old mattress with a violent, deranged drug addicted criminal who happened to be the only reason she was still alive and still managed to treat her nicer than the woman who had been responsible for bringing her into the world ever had. The sheer absurdity of it all would be laughable if she could remember what having a sense of humor felt like. What about a hot tub indeed. 

"I've never been in a hot tub. Only very wealthy people can afford those." Keiko found herself explaining to Joseph. 

Given his past career as a professional fighter, Joseph had occasionally enjoyed a hot tub in some rich guy's home, usually with some of his female relatives and/or some of the friends he made during his time fighting for his employer, and he distinctly remembered fucking some rich old bastard's wife in a hot tub once when the old bastard was at some stupid business meeting. Hot tubs were a pretty neat invention, he figured, and he was the first to admit that not everything he discovered that people who weren't from his home invented was all that impressive (or made any sense.) 

"Okay, but imagine you were in one right now." he pulled her right on top of him, Keiko holding on for lack of anything else better to do. "If we were in a hot tub right now, what would you do?" 

"I guess just enjoy how the water feels." 

Joseph took pride in his vivid imagination, but Keiko was so quiet and meek he found that he wanted to discover what she thought about-well, just about anything. He was sure there had to be something interesting she was hiding, he just had to crack that metaphorical nut and find out what. After mulling it over for barely a second, Joseph flipped her over on her back, stroking her hair as he held her down with only a minimal amount of effort, as he hardly needed to use any strength to hold her there. 

"Ignoring that I wouldn't be wearing this, pretend we're in a hot tub right now-what would you do?" 

Joseph could be patient when he wanted to, but he rarely put that into practice during conversations, especially with people who were more withdrawn and reserved than he was (which was nearly everyone.) Keiko would be lying if she claimed not to appreciate it sometimes, especially during certain difficult situations they had been in, but right now her brain was being eaten alive by the all-consuming awkwardness overwhelming every brain cell swimming around her skull. Taking a precious moment to blink, Keiko swallowed some saliva that didn't exist, giving Joseph a little squeeze. "My answer would be the same. Sometimes it's nice to just enjoy your surroundings." 

A few questionable wheels rolled around in Joseph's head in a purely metaphorical sense, thoughts syncing with other thoughts like some kind of fucked-up second-hand computer of an infrequently distributed model. If he screwed things up, she could always scream and hit him, so he took a deep breath, pressing a kiss on her forehead. 

"I don't need to ask why you're giving me that look, do I?" 

"What do you think?" 

Had she not been pinned down by him, Keiko would have shrugged. As weird as he was (a whole lot of weird, specifically,) Keiko had the same basic instincts a decent amount of women had, and traveling with someone who had plenty of tricks up his sleeve to make it pleasant for her had its perks. 

Keiko noticed flash of lightning off in the distance out of the corner of her eye. Speaking of eyes...

"I think we ought to find something to cover the windows to discourage any prying eyes." 

Joseph flashed her a knowing grin, one of his hands ghosting over one of her breasts through her shirt as he pressed his lips on hers. "I think you're right." 

Her heart pounding after Joseph told her to stay there while he threw a sheet over the window, Keiko kicked off her socks, waiting until he turned back to face her before sliding off the rest of her clothes, inhaling deeply as she felt the temperature of the room rise even as the air kissed her newly exposed skin, counting down the seconds until she felt a pair of rough hands pull her close to him and draw her into another kiss.


	18. Chapter 18

Were there better ways to spend the afternoon? Probably. Were there worse ways to spend the afternoon? Certainly. 

"Ow, hold on." 

"What?" 

"I got shampoo in my eye." 

Joseph, who had been scrubbing Keiko's soft pink curls with some rather mediocre quality shampoo, let go for a moment, allowing her to let some of the water in the shower hit her face and wash the shampoo out of her eyes. 

How Keiko had ended up taking a shower with Joseph was partly a matter of being practical, as the water supply was limited, and mostly a matter of being the type of person who got swept up in ridiculous and/or inappropriate situations entirely through the impulsive, bone-headed actions of other people. The place they were staying in happened to actually have families, like actual regular families with parents and children, and Keiko really didn't want to go down in history as someone who got caught fooling around in a shower with someone else inside a shelter where children were staying. 

A shelter was a shelter, and a shower was a shower, and after getting spotted somewhere along the way by a group of people, one disastrous interview later (that only didn't end in complete failure thanks to Joseph spotting a herd of zombies from 300 yards away and throwing a downed airplane at them to crush them into a disgusting gory paste) and one painfully awkward interview later (thanks to Keiko's unwanted penchant for crying when people asked her questions about her family,) Joseph and Keiko found themselves part of a group of survivors. 

"Ugh, I hate when that happens." Keiko complained, or in as so much as she ever complained about anything, because complaining might make people hate her and if people hated her who knows what they would do to her? 

"This place is kind of boring." Joseph commented, paying not a whole lot of attention. 

Somewhere in his brain, there were thoughts zooming around like cars desperately trying to get the hell off of a 15-lane mega-highway in a terrible downpour with rain, hail, thunder, and lightning at the same time, with at least a few of them involving the girl whose hair he had gone back to scrubbing. Soft, sweet-something smells good, Joseph realized, though it took him a bit longer to realize what it was, at which point he promptly forgot what it was in the first place. 

"Well, at least it seems safe and the people are decent. I'm surprised they let us stay but I know better than to waste time asking why." Keiko stared down at the ugly tiles on the shower floor as Joseph scrubbed her hair, humming to himself with an amused expression on his face. 

"I guess." After a second passed by without Keiko responding, Joseph spotted his opportunity like a hawk zooming in on a mouse and pulled her closer, rubbing her shoulders after all the shampoo had swirled down the drain, presumably to clog some poor abused septic pipe somewhere (their new shelter was safe but there was an unsettling amount of pipes everywhere, as it used to be some kind of fancy factory sometime long before either of them had been alive.) Her skin was as soft on her shoulders or back as it was on her hands or face, something Joseph found quite appealing. He wasn't picky, but that was besides the point. 

"You know the water supply's limited, right?" After spending enough time with him, Keiko realized that while Joseph had more than a one-track mind, all the tracks went in bizarre directions and rarely did any of them ever lead to a plausible finish line, so to speak. 

"Yeah, we got about 20 minutes and I have an idea." Only taking a moment to gauge her reaction, Joseph barreled on like a train with broken brakes on an equally broken track. "Which would make more sense if I showed you." 

"Like what?" They had 20 minutes and if she washed anything else, she'd scrub her own skin off. And the water was nice and warm. That, and Keiko was an expert at getting involved in ridiculous situations thanks to the weird ideas other people came up with. 

______

After finding a spot on the wall that was smoother than the rest, Keiko pressed her hands against the wall, her cheeks burning and her heart pounding as she squeezed her legs together and, at times, squeezed her eyes closed just as tightly, not entirely sure whether it felt better or worse to do this in the shower rather than on a bed or mattress. Being an expert in quite a lot of things a man could do with a woman, Joseph had no trouble at all slipping two fingers inside her and curling them in and out until a familiar slickness materialized in her now-aching cunt, following it up by rubbing her clit in small, careful motions with one of them, repeating the action over and over until she felt her legs shake like Jell-O and a familiar heat bloom in her core. 

"You sure this is gonna work?" 

"Of course, I've done this plenty of times." Holding no beliefs that dictated holding off on having sex with any willing women he encountered had a positive side-effect of giving Joseph plenty of experience, learning over time exactly how to make it good for any woman he was with long before the two of them ever met. "Just squeeze your legs together-there, just like that." 

Keiko said nothing during the moment he lined up his cock with her pussy, sliding it right in between her legs. It felt a little weird at first, though part of her felt that might have been because they were in the shower and the added wetness made everything more slippery, but soon the sensation added to her arousal, the heat in her stomach that had started out as embers soon exploding into red-hot flames, her body tense and yet relaxed at the same time, her mind and heart racing like a ticking time bomb. 

A low moan was all the indication Keiko needed to realize that Joseph seemed to be enjoying it just as much-aside from the obvious fact that it was his idea in the first place. He would have much preferred being inside her, listening to her screaming as he pounded her but given their current circumstances, this suited him just fine. The soft, slick feel of her pussy rubbing along his cock was nothing short of amazing-he sort of regretted not being able to see her face like this, but otherwise he had no complaints, thrusting in and out slowly at first, his hearing perfectly attuned to every cute little noise she made, small and cute, just like her. 

The heat blazing insider her only grew more and more intense as Joseph picked up the pace, holding her in place with one hand and using the other to grab one of her breasts. Squeezing just a little, as he knew that being too rough would ruin everything, Joseph let out a low hum in response when he felt her try to clench her legs together-she was already squeezing pretty tight for someone as small and delicate as her, but then, to be fair, most people in general were small and delicate compared to him-she was just a whole lot cuter than most of them. 

"I bet that feels good, doesn't it?" he breathed, his voice halting a moment to drum up the will to finish his thought. A quick nod was all he got in return, but he didn't mind. "Keep your legs squeezed together just like that-" It was a bit difficult to speak, given how good it felt, but knowing how she responded to encouragement made it worth it. "You like the way my cock feels rubbing against your pussy?" 

A small squeak of surprise was enough to tell him all he needed to know, thrusting away with abandon-another bonus of doing it this way was that he didn't have to worry about fucking her too hard and hurting her in the process. With each additional thurst, she moaned in a soft, quiet little voice that drove him nuts, Joseph holding her as close as possible while she let herself relax all over except for her legs, which she kept squeezed together until he felt a familiar tension materialize deep in his core before disappearing just as quickly as it came, Keiko watching with half-lidded eyes as something hot and sticky spilled on the tile floor before being washed away down the drain, presumably to end up wherever the shampoo from earlier found itself. 

"Fuck, that was good." Keiko nodded in agreement, slumping against Joseph lacking, for once, an overwhelming amount of cares about the world and every last thing that was going on in it. 

"Yeah..." she managed to get out in a weak voice, still shaking from the intensity of everything as she turned to face him. 

Keiko knew a lot of things, and one of those was that her stamina was roughly somewhere between pathetic and worryingly low. Joseph was more than accommodating, however, happy to enjoy giving her only what she could handle and nothing more without complaint. That said, he hadn't actually finished her off before, so now was as good a time as any to correct that. 

"Next time I'll give it to you properly, as hard as you want but for now this will have to do." he told her, bending down to bury his head between her legs, Keiko having just enough mental clarity to throw her legs over his shoulders to keep from falling over as he licked and sucked on her clit. 

He could have taken longer, much longer, in fact, but patience was not a virtue he had a lot of in the moment (and the water shutting off before finishing would be a distraction,) so putting his long-term memory into action, he did exactly what he did best, Keiko barely having time to realize what was happening before the sudden flash of light behind her eyes and her pussy clenching told her everything she needed to know. For a few moments afterwards, after Joseph remembered just in time to shut off the water before the shower would shut itself off and an alarm shaming them for using too much water would start blaring, Keiko felt curiously close to calm and content, feeling warm and lazy despite having just taken a shower with water that was slightly cooler than she would have liked. It was by all accounts a very pleasant feeling, both of them curled up in each other's arms for a few perfectly nice, satisfying moments until the motion sensors that told the lights when to stay on and when to shut off caused the lights to turn off after they had stayed still a moment too long, sending Joseph running out of the shower with Keiko in his arms, both of them screaming in sheer terror, the other residents of their new shelter having neglected to inform them of the existence of or the nature of the motion sensors.

"Ahh, I love this smell." Fred, a squat, stocky man of medium height with more hair on his arms than a mountain gorilla, remarked to himself as he took a puff of a fancy Cuban cigar about 5 floors above where the newest additions to their group had just taken a shower. 

"Ah, well, I'm not a fan of tobacco myself, but I'm glad you've found something to enjoy, sir." Brad, a slightly taller, lanky man wearing mirrored sunglasses and a black military beret who was missing the pinky finger on his right hand, replied, missing the devious look on his superior's face . 

"Who said anything about cigars? I'm talking about something much different." 

"Huh?-I mean, what would that be, sir?" 

Fred gave his subordinate a knowing look, understanding full well that the younger man would never truly comprehend. Few men did, after all. He turned to face the other man, smoking the ashes of his cigar in his ashtray. "Fear." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you want to know what kind of hat one of the not-quite-random guys is wearing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_beret


	19. Chapter 19

Wandering around the wilderness was nothing new for Keiko months after life as she knew it crashed to a sudden and abrupt halt, the afternoon sun transforming into the late afternoon sun as it crawled across the sky, as weary and worn out as she was. The sky had slowly become clearer after they escaped from the last and most unfortunate place they had once thought might be decent to settle down in while they worked to find a dependable group of other survivors and help drag the world out of the epic disaster it had plunged into like a dead goldfish being flushed down a toilet. Always got to remember to be grateful for the small things, Keiko reminded herself, even if the increasingly unfamiliar landscape left her with a new, different sort of anxiety than what she had experienced before. 

"Heeeeyyyyy, big guy! You're a good boy, aren't you? I bet you want a treat, don't you?" 

Keiko could do nothing but stare wide-eyed in a mix of shock and confusion when a giant bear missing an eye, who had to be at least ten feet tall standing on its hind legs if she had to guess, lumbered out of the woods, barely having time to realize where it was before Joseph bowled it over, hugging it much like a child hugging their favorite teddy bear and squeezing its face. 

"Too bad I got nothing for you though, I got like nothing to eat lately-there's hardly anything to hunt out here and I gotta save the rest of my rations for my friend until we find more food!" 

The bear, although upon closer inspection (or as close as Keiko could look from the large rock she was hiding behind,) its ears seemed to be just-barely-not-quite the right shape and its snout was just different enough from what she was expecting when she first noticed its shadow on the ground that she couldn't help but second-guess just exactly what it was that she was looking at. At any rate, it seemed rather docile, more like a piece of furniture than an actual animal, and seemed just about as enthusiastic as a piece of furniture as well. Its beady eyes, combined with its oddly small face and stoic expression, made the creature almost resemble a teddy bear in a weird, roundabout way. 

"Uh, Joseph, what are you-" Keiko barely had time to ask him a few minutes ago what he was doing when they first spotted the creature wandering out of a thicket of trees, her heart skipping a beat when she saw just how big it was. 

"Don't worry, these guys are friendly, they just eat berries and honey." 

Before Keiko could even begin opening her mouth, Joseph leapt towards it, tackling it in a bear hug (no pun intended, as she genuinely lacked a better way to describe what he did to the oddly composed and unexcitable creature,) rubbing its head before grabbing its face and pressing his forehead against its forehead, the stoic creature staring at Joseph with slight confusion while Joseph wore a huge, goofy grin on his face. 

Well, he looks happy-Joseph was by no means what anyone would call mentally stable but Keiko was like a gloomy rain-cloud by comparison, something she sometimes found herself feeling guilty for. At least he can find something to smile about-Keiko envied him in some ways. He was free-freer than anyone, doing whatever he felt like unless someone wanted to stop him and had the power to do it, a rare set of circumstances that so far, had almost never happened during the course of their journey. With his imposing stature and inhuman strength, speed, and overall physical prowess, coupled with his ability to live as comfortably in the wilderness as normal people lived in cities with cars and shopping malls and electricity and air conditioning, there was little that seemed impossible for him in their current environment. Aside from coming in handy to keep her alive for as long as he had, Keiko realized not too long into their journey that even if they found civilization-something that resembled what life had been like for her before and he didn't care for it for whatever reason-perhaps a bad government or a long list of rules, he could easily leave and live in nature without any trouble. 

Such a life would have no lack of freedom, to be sure, but there was a reason people had formed civilizations throughout humanity's history, Keiko thought, her mood darkening once again. Depending on the circumstances, Joseph could be as bright as the sun but Keiko often found herself feeling as dark as an unplugged lamp during a power outage regardless of the circumstances she was in, the simple reality itself making her feel even worse, as all her bad feelings made her feel guilty for having them, which only worsened her bad moods, which in turn intensified her guilt and so on and so forth like a never-ending cycle. Her mother often told her the look on her face was depressing and as casually cruel and callous as the woman was, Keiko couldn't help but admit that she was right, not that Joseph minded, though Keiko chalked that up to him having a remarkably one-track mind. If there was any opportunity at all, no matter how flimsy, Joseph would put on his game face and put in as much effort as possible to charm her, or at least get an amusing reaction out of her. 

He must not be very picky, she thought back when they first met, introduced to each other by someone who was no longer around, his eyes glued onto her the moment he saw her like he had just spotted the most exquisite, invaluable treasure in all the world, a moment that, to her, felt like both the shortest and the longest moment of her life, a moment where all the ambient noise in her surroundings seemed to disappear without a trace and the whole world ceased to orbit and spin on its axis, a tight feeling in her chest and an odd, yawning sense of emptiness flooding her all at once until it disappeared as quickly as it came and her hearing returned and the earth resumed rotating on its natural path around the sun. If the other two people in the room at the time noticed any of it, they didn't comment, the whole moment passing as quickly as it happened, none of them truly realizing how their lives would change from then on forward. 

That must be nice, in a way, she thought-to grow fond of others so easily, without embarrassment or shame. Such a freeing existence seemed out of reach for her, at least-

"You can pet him if you want." Joseph offered, squeezing the poor creature with gleeful enthusiasm like a little kid playing with the family dog. 

"Ah, well..." 

Oh what the heck. 

Its fur was soft-softer than her old dog, Ferdinand, a wiry little mutt with curly fur that had died of old age a while before society took a nosedive straight through the center of the earth. It almost reminded her of a stuffed animal, albeit a massive, giant replica of one that was also warm and smelled like the forest. The farther they traveled, the more and more unusual the landscape and the animals they found along the way were, everything becoming a little less ordinary and a little more peculiar, even the weather seemed less and less predictable as time passed. 

"Hey, where you going?" Joseph yelled when the sound of something cracking in half startled the animal, causing it to run off with its stubby tail pressed down as flat as possible and its ears drooping low. "Guess it got spooked by the sound." Joseph conceded after it disappeared back into the forest, Keiko staring at Joseph's back when he turned in the direction of the noise to see what happened. 

Getting the highest scores in school every year of her educational career and scoring higher on a comprehensive IQ test than anyone had in the last 600 years was good for a lot of things, but sadly useless where the current situation rapidly unfolding in front of them was concerned, Keiko finding herself unable to do anything but hide in a tree some distance away until Joseph returned, minus his shirt and covered in blood-at least she hoped it was blood and not something worse, holding a huge wrench that had to be at least 40 or 50 lbs. and wiping his forehead with the back of his arm. 

Joseph was no stranger to run-ins with people who wanted him dead or people who wanted people who looked like him dead, and dealing with most of them was good practice, after all. The apocalypse was so full of opportunities to practice, after all-he looked up in the tree, finding Keiko clutching onto the trunk of the tree, her eyes darting around like a nervous little squirrel being stalked by a jaguar. The apocalypse was also so full of other sorts of opportunities as well, his expression softening with relief when he saw that she was unharmed.

______

"You sure this is a good idea? It looks kind of..." Keiko wasn't exactly thrilled when she and Joseph stumbled on an abandoned tiny house constructed from a re-purposed shipping container out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere-even the few stray inhabitants who lived on the farthest outskirts of The New Republic of America didn't live in this kind of environment and considering how the people in the outskirts lived, that was saying something. 

"Eh, it's fine, I'll check it out, you wait out here." Joseph kicked down the door, swinging an axe he had been carrying with him at a shambling pile of bones and decaying flesh that roared at him and decapitating it in one clean swing before stomping on its head. 

Oh God-Keiko tried to not grimace too much while Joseph dragged the corpse out, tossed it away, and kicked the remains of the head out just as effortlessly as he had disposed of the ret of it. 

Following a rather unpleasant cleaning session, securing the door, and digging in to some rather meager rations, Keiko found herself lying on a second-rate mattress on the ground with Joseph, who had since washed up a bit and taken off his shirt. 

"I guess this place isn't so bad." Keiko acknowledged. "It's a bit drafty though." 

Keiko wasn't the type of person who understood how flirting worked or how to do it but Joseph saw his opportunity and swooped in like a hawk zeroing in on a garden mouse, pulling her close to him. 

Of course he took off his shirt, Keiko bemoaned, feeling the heat gather in her face and deep in her core as her heart raced as if it was threatening to burst out of her rib-cage and run away to Hawaii to live a new life in the Witness Protection Program. 

"I can fix that." 

Of course he'd say that-Oh, hell. Keiko inhaled sharply, trying to keep her breathing all slow and calm like it should be and ignore the very noticeable sensation of something poking her butt. "This place gets you in the mood?" she asked. 

"Not really but I happen to feel like being helpful right now." 

Sure you do-"Oh, really? Uh, that's-" Oh, fuck it, just spit it out already. "That's uh, well, I guess I'd expect that from you. You're always very helpful." 

Joseph's devious grin went unnoticed by Keiko, since she didn't bother to turn around to face him, but she was struggling to find a good reason to turn him down. "Well of course, anything for a cute girl like you." 

Ah, and there it was. How dare he go and puff up her measly, paltry self esteem in a tiny house all alone out in the middle of nowhere like this? The indignity of it all...Her mother always told her there was no point in complaining about it, but life really was so unfair. 

"You're very generous." 

"That's not all I am." If Keiko suddenly failed to notice the slight draft in the house before, her blood pressure really shot up when Joseph kissed her neck, caressing her thigh oh so-well, not very gently, in fact. To her shame-intelligent, independent women like her weren't supposed to enjoy stuff like this-her mother had always told her as much. Keiko was never fond of her mother but that didn't stop her from fearing that other people would judge her just as harshly as her mother if they ever found out she did stuff like this with a man and the fear mixed with her arousal to create a complicated cocktail of emotions that made her want to get sucked into a wormhole and disappear to another dimension. 

"I didn't think so-" Keiko didn't even bother to resist when Joseph turned her to face him, gently pushing her on her back and grabbing one of her thighs. "I mean, I'm sorry, that sounded rude, didn't it?" 

"You worry too much." Joseph bent down to kiss her cheek. "

"I know, I'm sorry-" 

"What are you apologizing for, you didn't do anything." Keiko felt her racing heartbeat pound like a set of drums as he climbed on top of her, this time pinning her under him by placing both his hands on either side of her until he reached one up to brush a strand of her loose pink curls away from her face. "If you're not in the mood, you can say so, I won't get mad, I just thought I'd offer." 

Well, I've gotten this far, what's the worst that could happen? "It's alright,-" If anyone else was around, she would have crawled into a hole and died but for once, she was happy they hadn't seen anyone else in days. "I wouldn't mind, uh-well, you know. It is kind of cold after all."

"Is that so? Consider me happy to help, then." 

The look on his face was nothing unexpected but it still gave her butterflies in her stomach regardless, her eyes widening in surprise when Joseph hugged her close, kissing one spot on her neck, followed by another, and another, his hand sliding between her legs as he slipped two fingers in her pussy, Keiko staring up at the ceiling until she no longer noticed what it looked like, the residual tension she had been holding in her muscles and bones evaporating like mist after a great big storm when the sun came out once more as the night went on. Perhaps this wasn't such a bad little place to find after all, she thought, tangling her hands in his long thick hair, as thick as and smoother than a horse's tail, her breasts pressing against his broad, sturdy chest and his free hand pressing against the small of her back. Not a bad place indeed.


	20. Chapter 20

The hot, humid air hummed with the sound of the birds chirping, the insects buzzing, and the monkeys howling, the mist from an early morning downpour still coating the leaves on the trees and bushes and the petals of the flowers. Being over seven feet tall, the quiet, stoic man taking a calming stroll through the rainforest was careful to hold the baby boy in his arms gently, singing to him in his mother's native tongue. Though the man wasn't married to the woman who had given birth to his son, he had grown quite fond of her during their time together, after he stumbled upon the small village she called home-if it could even be called as such. 

Besides her, there were only 11 other women- no men, and no children, not until she had given birth to his son three weeks ago. Though there was a bit of a language barrier between the two of them at first because they each spoke different dialects of the language that was most common in his village growing up, they eventually learned how to understand each other though trial and error, leading to a successful relationship. 

"Shh, don't cry, you're safe." The man held the baby in his arms with a stoic expression on his face, looking down at the tiny human wrapped up in a blanket in his arms, his little eyes squeezed shut as he let out a cry. "I know you're still new to this world, and it's a bit of a shock, but you'll get used to it." 

Though the man rarely smiled and laughed even less often, a grin spread across his face when a fat little sparrow landed on his son's nose, causing the 3 week old boy to scrunch his face up in confusion, then make a happy sound in delight as the bird chirped at him, flying off just as quickly as it had approached. 

"Don't worry, I'll make sure I can give you the best of what this world can offer us." the man spoke softly to his son, making sure never to raise his voice above that which was necessary for his son to hear him. "I promise I'll do whatever it takes to make sure you can live freely, so you won't end up having to live how I lived when I was a boy." Though the man was overcome with emotion holding his firstborn son, who was to be one of many, most of whom he would never meet, he never raised his voice to the slightest degree, keeping it steady, as he always did, because he never raised his voice unless there was good reason to. "I know you'll grow strong and learn what you need to in order to survive-after all, besides me, you have the best mother in the world." 

The man looked down on his son's face, his eyes watering when he saw the boy's little smile, his tiny face beaming with joy as he reached out a small hand to touch his father's face. Though his own life had its share of troubles, he would make any sacrifice to ensure his son would never have to face the same horrors he had-never spend his life laboring for another without reward, never have to watch his village wiped out or its inhabitants slaughtered, never have to watch his loved ones be raped or beaten or tortured, never live without knowing where his next meal would come from. No sacrifice was too great. No burden was too heavy to bear for the tiny new person curled up in his arms, beaming a joyful smile at his father. 

"Speaking of your mother." the man continued, "I think it's about time we head back to see her-" 

Joseph woke up in a cold sweat, his hands shaking. 

Physically, his father didn't resemble him in all ways but enough that anyone who saw them together could make the connection if they paid attention. Taller by half a foot, maybe more, his hair long since bleached white from stress, so heavily muscled that he passed the point of being attractive and most women found him repulsive-most women in the country he found himself living in anyways, and though their faces were both shaped pretty much the same, Joseph was glad he had as much of his mother's features as his father's-the years had not been anything close to kind to his father and his mother-

Joseph almost cracked his jaw swallowing the painful lump in his throat, tossing the thin blanket off him across the room. Picking up his coat that he had tossed on the floor last night while he was busy doing something he had no memory of, he fished out the worn, faded picture he kept tucked away in wherever the safest spot he could find happened to be (which, as of yesterday, happened to be a pocket in his coat.) Taking a moment to stare at the picture, he tucked it away as carefully as possible and sat on the floor next to the bed, staring out the crack in the window.

It's a good thing I look more like my mother-the thought of turning out to look exactly like his father if he grew old was nothing if not unpleasant. Sure, the alcohol, drugs, and various forms of physical abuse and punishment had taken their toll, but the man was rarely considered attractive and people rumored that he could make a woman barren by glaring at her. Strange, then, how he was born, but Joseph never really paid much attention to what other people said or thought. 

Catching a glimpse of the flashlight still on in the other room of the abandoned diner he and his cute new friend had taken shelter in for about a week and a half, Joseph decided to see what she was up to. Finding that she was reading one of those huge books she lugged around (or had him lug around, since he was the one that carried almost everything for obvious, perfectly logical reasons, like the fact that he was twice her size,) he decided to give her some company.

"Oh, they made a typo on page 337-" Keiko's thoughts were interrupted while she was taking notes in a tiny pocket-sized notebook with a sparkly gel pen by Joseph placing a hand on the small table she was sitting at, Keiko letting out a small squeak of surprise when she looked up to see him eyeing the book she was reading (and her as well.) Multitasking was a necessity given her lack of ability to keep a regular schedule but it left her open to being easily distracted, a flaw that triggered her anxiety. 

"What're you writing about?" Keiko felt her heart skip a little-Joseph had very little concept of personal space. If she wanted him to keep a certain distance from her, she had to tell him. Being assertive was not one of her talents, which led to rather predictable results every time something like this happened. 

"I'm taking notes on a a book I found-carrying around the whole book would be too much trouble with all the stuff we have so if I just take notes on the most important stuff, I can condense my bag and make it lighter." 

If Joseph had an opinion regarding the weight of her bag (which he usually ended up carrying,) he didn't mention it. "Aw, so you're not writing about me?" 

"No, just, uh-I'm just taking notes on this book I'm reading." 

Joseph quirked a brow at her. He couldn't read more than a few basic words but that did nothing to dampen his interest. "Huh, how long have you been here? I fell asleep in the other room after hunting and didn't notice you here until I woke up." 

"Oh, uh, not too long, just an hour or so. It doesn't take me a whole lot more than that, really." 

Despite Joseph not moving a muscle, Keiko still couldn't seem to calm down. He had that effect on her, it seemed, and it was, well, not convenient to say the least, considering he was the only thing standing in between her and a painful death of starving in the wilderness after the world as she knew it had ended.

"Well, if you're almost done, you want to-" Joseph couldn't help but take a moment to pause when he saw the look on her face. "Aw, come on, you don't have to be so shy." 

Ah, here we go. This is, uh-Keiko was no good with people, and she was even worse when someone was making direct eye contact with her so close, thanks to Joseph grabbing her face in his hands, which were twice as big as her own, before letting go to lean over her even closer than before, leaving barely an inch of space in between them. Come on, it's not that scary-he just-

"I am shy though, I can't help it." 

Keiko had to consciously focus every fiber of her being into not hiding her face in her hands but the way Joseph laughed when he saw the blush on her face made her feel like someone was holding her by the leg dangling her over an open flame.

"Don't get me wrong, I don't mind-" Keiko tried as hard as she could to not think about how much she wanted to curl up in a ball and roll herself away until she could calm down but Joseph grabbing her hands didn't help at all. "But there's nothing to be shy about. There's nothing wrong with fucking if you're in the mood. I just thought I'd offer since you seem like you've been pretty busy lately." 

Why did he have to be so blunt about it? Ah, well. She sighed. It was better than the alternative at least-one of her ex-boyfriends was living (or was, as he was most certainly not living anymore at this point,) proof of that. Of course, she never actually got any farther than second base with him but whatever. Joseph was terrifying to a lot of people, including people who could pick her up and punt her like a football, and she couldn't deny that he had an intimidating presence even behind his friendly demeanor, but he was attractive and his friendly attitude was more than just a smokescreen to hide his true feelings-with time, she had long since discovered that despite his terrifying strength and ability to shrug off killing people like it was no big deal when he had to, she did, in fact, notice the kindness he displayed to her was real. In all their time together, he had never hurt her feelings on purpose or ever laid a hand on her to hit her, and despite their frequently questionable encounters with other people, the way he treated animals and children helped calm the part of her brain that worried if he was just a selfish, callous asshole who viewed her as nothing more than a piece of meat. 

______

It was nothing Keiko had ever imagined happening in her life, not even close, but spending some time "bonding" together turned out to be a surprisingly decent way to pass the time on occasion, even if he was in the mood more than she was. At the moment, it certainly helped that for once, they had managed to secure a mattress that was actually decently comfortable. 

"Shh, don't worry, I won't push you any harder than you can handle." 

Keiko felt her ears burn as Joseph gently spread her legs apart-oh, it's right there-oh Lord-Keiko tried to muffle a surprised noise when she felt his cock rubbing against her pussy. He had taken his sweet time eating her out first, something she would be hard pressed to forget given that during the process she bit down on her lip hard enough to leave a smear of blood on her chin and wipe it on the sheets while she was spacing out. "Uh, no, I just-I was just spacing out, haha. You really got me going there before..." 

Keiko could feel her heart rate speed up when Joseph teased her by rubbing the tip of his dick against her hole. This was kind of scary but also exciting, and Keiko was no good at talking when she was scared or excited, let alone both. "Just relax for me and don't move for a second." He didn't wait any longer after she gave him a quick nod to enter her, going all the way in with a single motion. Oh Lord it's big-

There's nothing to be scared of, she reminded herself. He's just a person. A person who happens to be twice as big as you are-" Keiko clapped a hand over her mouth to hold back a scream when he fit his cock all the way inside her-"Or maybe more" she thought-he was certainly taller and bigger than any other man she had ever known, which given the fact that she used to live in the most populated city in all of North America, was quite a feat. Even the tallest and strongest men topped out at around 6 feet tall, maybe a little over, and around 250 to 300 lbs at the heaviest, and no one, male or female, could even come close to matching Joseph's strength. At any rate, he was huge and he was also proportionate and it was all Keiko could do not to scream loud enough to wake the dead when he fucked her, going at it with hardly a care in the world. He could have gone faster if he wanted, and sometimes he did with other women, women who weren't quite as short and quite as tiny and quite as inexperienced as Keiko, but like most other things in life, he took it in stride, keeping his pace slower than what he was capable of to avoid causing her any serious discomfort. 

If she had anything to say about anything at all, he hardly gave her the time to speak, rubbing her clit with his thumb. His other hand, resting on one of her breasts, squeezed a little-he liked all sorts of women, but women as cute and sweet and soft as her were a rare treat indeed, taking all the time in the world before she finished again, following up by flipping her over and taking her from behind, holding her down with one hand while rubbing her back with the other. 

It was all she could do not to scream, though she sure gave it her best shot, clapping a hand over her mouth just like before until he yanked her hand away, shoving a few fingers in her mouth without missing a beat, rocking his hips back and forth as if it were as natural as breathing. "See, I told you I'd make you feel good, isn't that right?" He kept on thrusting a few more times until he realized his mistake-"Oh, wait-" he took his fingers out of her mouth for a moment, realizing why she hadn't answered. "Let's start over-" he paused to catch his breath, continuing like it was totally and completely normal in every possible way. "You like the way my cock feels inside you?" 

"Mm-yes-" Keiko could barely stutter out a single word, let alone a complete sentence but by God, she was going to try if it was the last thing she did. "It's-hot-and big-" Keiko felt her heart racing like she was running a marathon barefoot in the middle of the Sahara desert during a heat wave and even in a state like this her face still burned with embarrassment but luckily Joseph soon freed her from her misery by shoving his fingers in her mouth again. 

"See, I told you I'd make you feel good." He paused only a moment to take a breath before continuing, barely enough for her to even notice a pause. "Fuck ,you're so tight and wet-" 

Strangely, Keiko didn't find it difficult to remember not to accidentally bite his fingers-somehow this came naturally to her, a surprise if there ever was one-if anything, it increased her arousal. Despite drooling on his fingers a little, she barely noticed the sensation, being all too overwhelmed with how hard and fast he was fucking her, each quick, slapping sound of him bottoming out inside her ringing in her ears along with the low grunts and groans he made now and then. She wasn't really keeping track of those either, but the added noises just turned her on even more-being held down and fucked so hard by someone so much bigger than herself had quite the positive effect on her stress levels-if my mother saw me now, she'd call me a useless whore-Keiko could hardly imagine what her mother would think if she brought Joseph home, other than the fact that the woman who gave birth to her would no doubt find plenty of reasons to despise him and plenty of reasons to yell at her daughter for being a degenerate pervert. Her mother was probably dead though and though it still gave Keiko pangs of guilt now and then to find joy in the fact, Keiko was relieved all the same, content to lie exactly where she was while Joseph pounded her until she couldn't feel her own legs and he finished for the first time a few moments after her third orgasm. 

Having yet to gain enough weight to become pregnant, Keiko didn't utter a single complain as his hips stuttered a bit before stilling completely for the first time since they started, the odd, distinctive sensation of her pussy being filled with cum hitting her all once, though in reality it took at least several seconds or so. Groaning a little when he pulled out, Keiko wasted no time in curling up under a blanket, breathing hard as he curled up next to her, kissing her face, Keiko all too aware of the feeling of his naked body pressed against her back and enjoying every second of it. 

There were worse ways to pass time in the apocalypse. That much was certain without a doubt, a fact that, although she left it unspoken, she was positive they could both agree on. 


	21. Bonus Chapter

Several months ago-probably closer to a year at this point, Keiko was beginning what she hoped would be a challenging but exciting college career and an internship, making one more step in achieving the single goal that was closest to her heart, something she had held near and dear for most of her life. When things went wrong for her, however, they really went above and beyond the expected norm, her mishaps and misadventures giving way to epic disasters of proportions unlike anything she could ever anticipate. 

Oh God-It was so cold outside that when the floor creaked after a man twice her size opened the door and shut it behind him, her teeth chattered even though she was wrapped up in a heavy layer of fur, courtesy of a bear that was killed for its fur and other resources (Keiko resolved to leave exactly what to do with the rest of the bear to the man she was traveling with-butchering animals and disassembling their bodies for practical uses was way outside of her skillset and for good reason, considering she had grown up in the wealthy part of a well-off city, inside a gated community where the majority of the general public were never allowed to set foot in, inside an apartment with heating, air conditioning, electricity, running water, and a decent ventilation system.) To say she was the envy of many people living in the current century was the understatement of the year, but then, her mother had married a wealthy businessman who was gone 99 days out of 100 after her father disappeared and money was what made the world go round. 

Here, a year later, sheltering inside a cabin that her traveling companion had built himself, all but forgetting how cold she had been when he made himself right at home crawling under the bear pelt with her (at least he had taken off his blood-stained clothes, she thought for the precious few moments she had forgotten exactly what that meant. Clothes provided a layer between your skin and your environment, and without clothes, there was nothing standing between you and-

Oh fuck. 

"Good thing it's nice and cozy in here-If I stayed out there any longer, my balls would have frozen off." 

The inside of the cabin was nowhere near as warm as an apartment with central heating and air conditioning but then, Joseph wouldn't have known that because for al she knew, he had never been inside one and since she didn't want to rain on his parade by criticizing his skills of building a shelter, she didn't argue. "It's certainly warmer than it is outside." 

"That it is. I'd hate to be one of the poor bastards who has to live in a shithole like this year round." 

Keiko did a double-take: nobody lived this far north, not in thousands of years, at least as far as she had known. By most metrics, people would consider her to be far more intelligent than her companion, who was functionally illiterate and struggled to multiply and divide simple numbers in his head and couldn't figure out how to use a computer but it only made the moments where he revealed an odd tidbit of knowledge that she didn't have all that much more disturbing. For a man who was nothing if not loud and undeniably extroverted to the point where he could drown out 100 other people in a conversation by simply not shutting the fuck up, he never revealed more than the most vague and cryptic bits of information about his past, always oddly silent whenever someone questioned what country he was from or where his family was from when he didn't just change the subject without warning. 

The level of irony in the situation was so thick it could put the implants on a supermodel's tits to shame. Despite having anxiety that resisted every type of therapy and medication out there, as well as a very regrettable incident with electroshock therapy, not only did Keiko not bother to make a fuss when a man twice her size who had killed enough people that he forgot the exact number years before the two of them ever met crawled on the pile of furs and pillows next to her and held her close, she snuggled in closer when he pulled the bear pelt (which he happened to make himself after killing the animal half a day ago,) over both of them. 

"Uh, yeah, I bet that would suck." 

Even communicating with him was far from easy-they spoke the same language, sure, but the gap of knowledge between them regarding vocabulary and grammar was so wide that they had to resort to charades on more than one occasion to get a point across. Given his lack of access to decent education, it wasn't his fault, but Keiko found herself feeling like the world's biggest hypocrite. All her life, she had promised herself that if she ever had a relationship with someone that went beyond being platonic, she would ensure it was a healthy relationship with lots of communication where their long-term goals and plans for the future aligned. Instead, there she was, sharing a pile of furs with a man who wasn't allowed to vote or hold down a job in the country she used to be a citizen of or enter the city where she used to live and had the same attitude about killing people as most people did about doing laundry or taking the trash out. Oh, and he also picked up an RV trailer and threw it into the side of someone's house once, destroying the entire house in between sipping a bottle of Gatorade. That had been a very weird Tuesday. Not as weird as the time he strangled a man to death with the man's own intestines and left him tied up in them like a packaged ham in the store for the dead to eat though, but that was another story. 

Once, a long time ago it seemed, Keiko was a good girl who always did what she was told unless it involved hurting other people, who tried her best to do what she could to make the world a better place. Though she had never lost sight of her main goal, her current method of achieving it had most certainly ended up becoming much more of a convoluted process than she thought. For one thing, she never anticipated buddying up with a wanted felon to survive traveling through the Outside in search of a semblance of human civilization and she certainly never anticipated growing attracted to him as time went on. She was supposed to be a good person, and she never stopped trying, no matter how hard things got, but lying there with him during the middle of a cold snap in the middle of a thick, dense forest some hundreds of miles north of any known settlements that had popped up in the last few centuries or so, it was hard for her to feel like she had any reason to be proud of herself. 

"It's a good thing we found this patch of land to build this on." Joseph mused in between peppering her exposed collarbone with kisses. "Otherwise we'd still be stuck outside and my balls really would have frozen straight off." 

A younger, more innocent, less jaded Keiko from the past, say, like a several months ago, might have had some kind of internal meltdown after hearing that particular string of words leave his mouth but the new Keiko, who had nothing left inside her that remembered what being surprised or scandalized by something as petty as words felt like, only blushed a little when he pulled down her shirt-at least he was gentle enough about it not to rip the fabric-to suck on one of her nipples. 

Whether it was a good thing or a bad thing was purely a matter of opinion, but he was very good at what he did-enough so that it was almost odd, but her body certainly enjoyed it, a familiar feeling of warmth pooling inside her low in her body, the thrum of heat making her heart go a-flutter and her head swim. Whether or not time was of the essence (it wasn't, in this case,) Joseph was never the patient type. He tried his best for her, considering the size difference between them-the odd looks some people gave them in public did very bad things to her already shitty self esteem to say the least, but as long as she seemed okay, he never bothered to hesitate doing whatever it was that sounded good to him at the time. 

"You don't have to be so quiet, you know." Of course she knew but she wasn't about to tell him that-she had been a very quiet person for almost two decades and that was as true in bed as it was out of it. He knew he wasn't going to change her at this point but he enjoyed seeing what he could do to get a nice reaction out of her anyways. "There's nobody else around so you can make as much noise as you feel like." 

He didn't bother to comment when she responded with silence, still holding onto a chunk of his hair like she had been for the last several minutes. If she found one thing comforting, it was the softness of his hair, longer and thicker than any she had ever seen on any girls, a rich, bold dark red color, darker than what you'd find on a piece of fruit or a flower but not as dark as wine- it was almost like something some big-shot rich cunts her mother hung around with would call maroon or burgundy.

The look on her mother's face if she could see her now would be a painful combination of horrible and funny-everyone knew how fussy she was about the sort of company she kept or wanted her daughter to keep and people like Joseph came nowhere close to fitting into that equation at all. 

Good, it would serve that miserable cunt right Keiko thought when Joseph flipped her on her stomach, pulling her close to him so he could thrust into her, a low grunt passing his lips when he felt how tight she squeezed around him. 

"It's a good thing we have each other to keep warm up here-otherwise who knows what would happen." 

Coming from anyone else what he said would sound smug but knowing what she knew about Joseph, he was being completely honest and in a way, it was quite the refreshing change of pace from the sorts of people she usually dealt with before the world ended. 

"Nothing good, I'm sure." Keiko struggled to get a single world out, much less a whole sentence but even in her current position, she always aimed to be polite (although it was true-she would have died months ago if he hadn't been there.)

"You know, they say practice makes perfect" Joseph paused a moment to pull her towards him again, "But even though you've never been with a man before, you're such a good girl and you take me so well." 

He hummed as he picked up the pace, leaving no room for her to respond. Wasting the energy on it wouldn't have been worth it anyways, a small moan passing her lips as he grabbed her waist. Leaving hand-prints there afterwards was nothing unusual for him, not that she cared-it wasn't like anyone was gonna see anything anyways and it was nothing compared to all the other kinds of pain she had experienced. His hands were warm, at least, just like the rest of him. No portable furnace in the world could even dream of holding a candle to him, and as cold as it was outside, she appreciated it all the more when he completely crawled on top of her, getting close enough to fuck her harder and deeper but still being careful not to smother her. 

With most other girls, he didn't have to be as careful, but then, as much as he liked all girls, she was truly something special compared to all the rest. He would have taken her every way he could think of if she had the stamina to endure it, but as it was, making use of the same few positions didn't bother him. Picky was not a word in his vocabulary as far as women were concerned. Rich women weren't too high on his list, admittedly, but then, having the egalitarian mindset that he did, he found all rich people useless and crooked, leeches the world would be better off without. 

One moment, Keiko was hot and sweaty with her heart racing around like she was running late and trying to find her bus pass in the morning like she sometimes did before the world ended, the next, she found herself lying limp on the pile of furs, her head smashed against a pillow as she slowly began to recognize her surroundings once again. 

"Call it a hunch, but I bet you're not as cold now." 

Oh-what the-

Keiko's eyes widened when she realized what the hot, sticky feeling between her legs was. She was too malnourished and underweight for it to matter but he came inside her all of a few seconds ago, panting and breathing heavily but otherwise not much more worn out than usual. She could only imagine what he would try if her level of stamina was closer to his, but then, some mysteries were meant to stay secret for a reason, she decided. Having almost forgotten her own name, where she was, and her reason for being there for a while, Keiko decided it wasn't worth thinking too hard about. 

"I'll go grab a towel in case you need one." Joseph told her, Keiko lying as still as a statue after he got up, her brain quickly turning off as she began to slide into unconsciousness, at least until she heard a phone ring. 

"Huh, maybe I better answer that-" 

Her thoughts were no more frantic than usual until her eyes popped open and, after getting a good look of her surroundings once again, she realized there wasn't a phone anywhere.

**Author's Note:**

> In case you want to know what kind of hat one of the not-so-random- guys is wearing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_beret


End file.
